The age of Calluna stands moderates post‐fire regeneration rate and trends in northern Calluna heathlands

Questions: Does stand age influence the direction and rate of post‐fire successional dynamics in coastal Calluna heaths and can old degraded heath vegetation be restored through reintroduction of fire? Location: Coastal heaths in the Tarva archipelago, central Norway. Methods: We investigated revegetation dynamics after experimental fires set in young (8 years since last fire) and old (>50 years since last fire) grazed heath stands. A repeated measures design was used, with floristic data recorded in permanent plots in the post‐fire successions (n=12) over a 7‐year period. The data were analysed using multivariate ordination techniques (PCA, RDA and PRC) and mixed effects models. Results: The age of Calluna stands strongly influenced post‐fire succession, different trends due to age explained 10.4% of variation in floristic data. Young heath showed faster succession towards pre‐fire community composition than old heath, and this could partially be explained by succession‐related factors: young heath had lower cover of mosses and lichens in the pre‐burned vegetation, and lower cover of litter early in succession. Young heath had a less pronounced overall community response to fire than old heath. Vegetative regeneration of C. vulgaris was absent in both old and young heath, but Calluna still re‐established as the dominant species within 5–7 years in both young and old stands. Regeneration dynamics were also affected by habitat conditions, different trends due to habitat explained 6% of variation. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that old stands do develop characteristic heathland vegetation and structure after fire, and while potential invasives into the system such as trees and rhizomatous species are present, they do not impair Calluna regeneration or vegetation development towards the target heathland community composition and structure. Further, as our young stands are only in their second fire rotation after restoration, we suggest that characteristic dynamics of managed heathlands can re‐establish relatively rapidly, even in severely degenerated sites (>50 years since last fire). Site‐specific factors also need to be considered. We conclude that there is restoration potential in old heaths, despite slow dynamics in the first rotation.     

Life history predicts risk of species decline in a stochastic world

Understanding what traits determine the extinction risk of species has been a long-standing challenge. Natural populations increasingly experience reductions in habitat and population size concurrent with increasing novel environmental variation owing to anthropogenic disturbance and climate change. Recent studies show that a species risk of decline towards extinction is often non-random across species with different life histories. We propose that species with life histories in which all stage-specific vital rates are more evenly important to population growth rate may be less likely to decline towards extinction under these pressures. To test our prediction, we modelled declines in population growth rates under simulated stochastic disturbance to the vital rates of 105 species taken from the literature. Populations with more equally important vital rates, determined using elasticity analysis, declined more slowly across a gradient of increasing simulated environmental variation. Furthermore, higher evenness of elasticity was significantly correlated with a reduced chance of listing as Threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. The relative importance of life-history traits of diverse species can help us infer how natural assemblages will be affected by novel anthropogenic and climatic disturbances.     

广西雅长林区野生兰科植物资源现状与保护策略

广西雅长林区野生兰科植物资源丰富,约有52属156种,其中雅长保护区几乎每座山头都有兰科植物的分布,但其种类与居群基株数量等分布不均匀,且不连续,呈现出破碎化现象,其中面积较大的局部密集分布区有16处.文中根据野生兰科植物的资源现状及生物生态学特性,针对目前兰科植物保育存在的问题,分析人畜干扰及自然条件变化等不利因素,从兰科植物维持机制角度出发,提出雅长野生兰科植物的保护应以就地保护为主、迁地保育为辅的保育措施与策略:保护区应加快建设的步伐,构建野生兰科植物种质资源基因库,同时对密集分布区在人畜干扰大的区域,优先拉设铁丝网围护,并派专人巡护,重点保护,确保野生兰科植物及基因库安全.     

Inducing pluripotency in somatic cells from the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), an endangered felid

Induced pluripotency is a new approach to produce embryonic stem-like cells from somatic cells that provides a unique means to understand both pluripotency and lineage assignment. To investigate whether this technology could be applied to endangered species, where the limited availability of gametes makes production and research on embryonic stem cells difficult, we attempted generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from snow leopard (Panthera uncia) fibroblasts by retroviral transfection with Moloney-based retroviral vectors (pMXs) encoding four factors (OCT4, SOX2, KLF4 and cMYC). This resulted in the formation of small colonies of cells, which could not be maintained beyond four passages (P4). However, addition of NANOG, to the transfection cocktail produced stable iPS cell colonies, which formed as early as D3. Colonies of cells were selected at D5 and expanded in vitro. The resulting cell line was positive for alkaline phosphatase (AP), OCT4, NANOG, and Stage-Specific embryonic Antigen-4 (SSEA-4) at P14. RT-PCR also confirmed that endogenous OCT4 and NANOG were expressed by snow leopard iPS cells from P4. All five human transgenes were transcribed at P4, but OCT4, SOX2 and NANOG transgenes were silenced as early as P14; therefore, reprogramming of the endogenous pluripotent genes had occurred. When injected into immune-deficient mice, snow leopard iPS cells formed teratomas containing tissues representative of the three germ layers. In conclusion, this was apparently the first derivation of iPS cells from the endangered snow leopard and the first report on induced pluripotency in felid species. Addition of NANOG to the reprogramming cocktail was essential for derivation of iPS lines in this felid. The iPS cells provided a unique source of pluripotent cells with utility in conservation through cryopreservation of genetics, as a source of reprogrammed donor cells for nuclear transfer or for directed differentiation to gametes in the future.     

CPhos: A program to calculate and visualize evolutionarily conserved functional phosphorylation sites

Profiling using high‐throughput MS has discovered an overwhelming number of novel protein phosphorylation sites (“phosphosites”). However, the functional relevance of these sites is not always clear. In light of recent studies on the evolutionary mechanism of phosphorylation, we have developed CPhos, a Java program that can assess the conservation of phosphosites among species using an information theory‐based approach. The degree of conservation established using CPhos can be used to assess the functional significance of phosphosites. CPhos has a user friendly graphical user interface and is available both as a web service and as a standalone Java application to assist phosphoproteomic researchers in analyzing and prioritizing lists of phosphosites for further experimental validation. CPhos can be accessed or downloaded at http://helixweb.nih.gov/CPhos/ .     

Hitchhiking with forests: population genetics of the epiphytic lichen Lobaria pulmonaria in primeval and managed forests in southeastern Europe

Availability of suitable trees is a primary determinant of range contractions and expansions of epiphytic species. However, switches between carrier tree species may blur co‐phylogeographic patterns. We identified glacial refugia in southeastern Europe for the tree‐colonizing lichen Lobaria pulmonaria, studied the importance of primeval forest reserves for the conservation of genetically diverse populations and analyzed differences in spatial genetic structure between primeval and managed forests with fungus‐specific microsatellite markers. Populations belonged to either of two genepools or were admixed. Gene diversity was higher in primeval than in managed forests. At small distances up to 170 m, genotype diversity was lower in managed compared with primeval forests. We found significant associations between groups of tree species and two L. pulmonaria genepools, which may indicate “hitchhiking” of L. pulmonaria on forest communities during postglacial migration. Genepool B of L. pulmonaria was associated with European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) and we can hypothesize that genepool B survived the last glaciation associated within the refuge of European Beech on the Coastal and Central Dinarides. The allelic richness of genepool A was highest in the Alps, which is the evidence for a northern refuge of L. pulmonaria. Vicariant altitudinal distributions of the two genepools suggest intraspecific ecological differentiation.     

Projected changes in distributions of Australian tropical savanna birds under climate change using three dispersal scenarios

Identifying the species most vulnerable to extinction as a result of climate change is a necessary first step in mitigating biodiversity decline. Species distribution modeling (SDM) is a commonly used tool to assess potential climate change impacts on distributions of species. We use SDMs to predict geographic ranges for 243 birds of Australian tropical savannas, and to project changes in species richness and ranges under a future climate scenario between 1990 and 2080. Realistic predictions require recognition of the variability in species capacity to track climatically suitable environments. Here we assess the effect of dispersal on model results by using three approaches: full dispersal, no dispersal and a partial-dispersal scenario permitting species to track climate change at a rate of 30 km per decade. As expected, the projected distributions and richness patterns are highly sensitive to the dispersal scenario. Projected future range sizes decreased for 66% of species if full dispersal was assumed, but for 89% of species when no dispersal was assumed. However, realistic future predictions should not assume a single dispersal scenario for all species and as such, we assigned each species to the most appropriate dispersal category based on individual mobility and habitat specificity; this permitted the best estimates of where species will be in the future. Under this "realistic" dispersal scenario, projected ranges sizes decreased for 67% of species but showed that migratory and tropical-endemic birds are predicted to benefit from climate change with increasing distributional area. Richness hotspots of tropical savanna birds are expected to move, increasing in southern savannas and southward along the east coast of Australia, but decreasing in the arid zone. Understanding the complexity of effects of climate change on species' range sizes by incorporating dispersal capacities is a crucial step toward developing adaptation policies for the conservation of vulnerable species.     

The legacy of ice ages in mountain species: post‐glacial colonization of mountain tops rather than current range fragmentation determines mitochondrial genetic diversity in an endemic Pyrenean rock lizard

Aim The genetic impact of Quaternary climatic fluctuations on mountain endemic species has rarely been investigated. The Pyrenean rock lizard (Iberolacerta bonnali) is restricted to alpine habitats in the Pyrenees where it exhibits a highly fragmented distribution between massifs and between habitats within massifs. Using mitochondrial DNA markers, we set out: (1) to test whether several evolutionary units exist within the species; (2) to understand how the species persisted through the Last Glacial Maximum and whether the current range fragmentation originates from distribution shifts after the Last Glacial Maximum or from more ancient events; and (3) to investigate whether current mitochondrial diversity reflects past population history or current habitat fragmentation. Location The Pyrenees in south‐western France and northern Spain. Methods We used variation in the hypervariable left domain of the mitochondrial control region of 146 lizards collected in 15 localities, supplemented by cytochrome b sequences downloaded from GenBank to cover most of the species’ distribution range. Measures of population genetic diversity were contrasted with population isolation inferred from topography. Classical (F‐statistics) and coalescence‐based methods were used to assess the level of gene flow and estimate divergence time between populations. We used coalescence‐based simulations to test the congruence of our genetic data with a scenario of simultaneous divergence of current populations. Results Coalescence‐based analyses suggested that these peripheral populations diverged simultaneously at the end of the last glacial episode when their habitats became isolated on mountain summits. High mitochondrial diversity was found in peripheral, isolated populations, while the populations from the core of the species’ range were genetically impoverished. Where mitochondrial diversity has been retained, populations within the same massif exhibited high levels of genetic differentiation. Main conclusions As suggested for many other mountain species, the Pyrenean rock lizard survived glacial maxima through short‐distance range shifts instead of migration or contraction in distant southern refugia. Most of the main Pyrenean range has apparently been re‐colonized from a single or a few source populations, resulting in a loss of genetic diversity in re‐colonized areas. As a result, current levels of intra‐population mitochondrial diversity are better explained by post‐glacial population history than by current habitat fragmentation. Genetic population differentiation within massifs implies severe reduction in female‐mediated gene flow between patches of habitats.     

Consistency and use of information about threats in the participatory process for identification of priority conservation areas in the Brazilian Amazon

Despite the increasing number of scientific papers on the subject, conservation planning has failed to actively prioritise the creation of new protected areas. Strategies proposed to increase the creation of new protected areas based on conservation plans include broad stakeholder participation in decision-making processes in order to include their concerns and facilitate social acceptance of proposed actions. However, there are controversial views about the effectiveness of stakeholder participation. The quality of the decision depends both on the information used by stakeholders and on how it is used, so it is necessary to evaluate both these aspects of a decision-making process. Threats are intrinsically related to conservation decisions because they are more easily understood by people than biodiversity values, and they can affect both decisions and outcomes of conservation actions. This article analyses how information about threats was used in the decision-making process conducted by the Brazilian Government in 2006 to indicate priority areas for the conservation of the Amazon biome. We first verified the consistency of the information on threats attributed by stakeholders to these new priority areas, and then assessed whether the existence, levels and types of threats influenced the choice of areas for conservation. The results showed that there were some successes in recognising threats, but also many inconsistencies, especially in assigning levels of intensity for some types of threats such as fishing. The decision-making process also did not fully use available information to indicate areas for conservation. The lack of understanding on the motivation behind these inconsistencies could suggest the presence of political opportunism. A more quantitative approach to assigning priorities is needed: one that is less dependent on the individual input of stakeholders and more accurately reflects the actual emergency status of proposed areas. This indicates that greater effort should be allocated to combining a participatory approach with a robust decision support system.