The ecosystem services provided by social insects: traits,management tools and knowledge gaps

Social insects, i.e. ants, bees, wasps and termites, are key components of ecological communities, and are important ecosystem services (ESs) providers. Here, we review the literature in order to (i) analyse the particular traits of social insects that make them good suppliers of ESs; (ii) compile and assess management strategies that improve the services provided by social insects; and (iii) detect gaps in our knowledge about the services that social insects provide. Social insects provide at least 10 ESs; however, many of them are poorly understood or valued. Relevant traits of social insects include high biomass and numerical abundance, a diversity of mutualistic associations, the ability to build important biogenic structures, versatile production of chemical defences, the simultaneous delivery of several ESs, the presence of castes and division of labour, efficient communication and cooperation, the capacity to store food, and a long lifespan. All these characteristics enhance social insects as ES providers, highlighting their potential, constancy and efficiency as suppliers of these services. In turn, many of these traits make social insects stress tolerant and easy to manage, so increasing the ESs they provide. We emphasise the need for a conservation approach to the management of the services, as well as the potential use of social insects to help restore habitats degraded by human activities. In addition, we stress the need to evaluate both services and disservices in an integrated way, because some species of social insects are among the most problematic invasive species and native pests. Finally, we propose two areas of research that will lead to a greater and more efficient use of social insects as ES providers, and to a greater appreciation of them by producers and decision‐makers.     

PKP治疗骨质疏松性椎体压缩骨折的预后评价及继发危险因素分析

目的:分析椎弓根入路行椎体后凸成形术(PKP)治疗骨质疏松性椎体压缩骨折的预后评价及继发危险因素分析。方法:选择2016年2月-2018年2月我院收治的骨质疏松性椎体压缩骨折患者85例纳入本次研究,采用随机数表法分为观察组(n=43)和对照组(n=42)。对照组使用经皮椎体成形术进行治疗,观察组采用PKP进行治疗。比较两组患者手术情况、术后情况、椎体前缘高度丢失率、Cobb角、继发性骨折发生情况及分析骨质疏松性椎体压缩骨折患者术后继发骨折的危险因素。结果:观察组手术时间、透视次数、骨水泥注入量、术中出血量均显著低于对照组,差异显著(P0.05);观察组疼痛缓解时间、下地时间及住院时间均显著低于对照组,差异显著(P0.05);治疗前,两组椎体前缘高度丢失率、Cobb角比较,无显著差异;治疗后,两组患者的椎体高度丢失率明显下降,但两组术后7 d、术后6月两组椎体前缘高度丢失率、Cobb角比较无显著差异;观察组术后12月椎体前缘高度丢失率、Cobb角低于对照组,差异显著(P0.05);所有患者均随访12月,其中22例(25.88%)发生继发性椎体骨折,进行单因素分析,结果发现,两组患者性别、骨折部位、局部矢状面后凸角度、骨水泥量、椎体高度恢复、术后抗骨质疏松治疗差异无统计学意义(P0.05);骨质疏松原因、骨水泥椎间隙渗漏、术后支具佩戴、原发骨折类型与骨质疏松性椎体压缩骨折患者术后发生继发骨折相关(P0.05)。多因素Logistic分析显示,骨质疏松原因、骨水泥椎间隙渗漏、术后支具佩戴、原发骨折类型均是骨质疏松性椎体压缩骨折患者术后发生继发骨折的独立危险因素(P0.05)。结论:在骨质疏松性椎体压缩骨折患者中应用PKP可有效改善手术情况,随着时间的延长,PKP更有利于维持患者椎体高度;骨质疏松原因、骨水泥椎间隙渗漏、术后支具佩戴、原发骨折类型是骨质疏松性椎体压缩骨折患者术后发生继发骨折的危险因素,临床上对于具有危险因素的患者引起重视,并采取干预措施。     

Public Values for River Restoration Options on the Middle Rio Grande

River restoration is a widespread phenomenon. This reflects strong public values for conservation, though missing are studies explicitly justifying restoration expenditures. Public restoration benefits are not well quantified, nor are public preferences among diverse activities falling into the broad category “restoration.” Our study estimates public values for restoration on the Middle Rio Grande, New Mexico. Stakeholder meetings and public focus groups guided development of a restoration survey mailed to Albuquerque area households. Four restoration categories were defined: fish and wildlife; vegetation density; tree type; and natural river processes. Survey responses supplied data for both choice experiment (CE) and contingent valuation (CV) analyses, two established environmental economics techniques for quantifying public benefits of conservation policies. Full restoration benefits are estimated at over $150 per household per year via the CE and at nearly $50 per household per year via CV. The CE allows value disaggregation among different restoration categories. The most highly valued category was tree type, meaning reestablishing native tree dominance for such species as Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) and eradicating non‐native trees such as Saltcedar (Tamarix ramosissma). The high public values we have found for restoration offer economic justification for intensive riparian management, particularly native plant‐based restoration in the Southwest.     

基于条件价值法的大熊猫(Ailuropoda melanoleuca)存在价值评估

大熊猫(Ailuropoda melanoleuca)是我国特有的国家一级保护物种,具有重要的保护意义,但其存在价值目前缺乏明确的市场价格.因此对大熊猫的存在价值进行估算,在中国乃至世界的野生动物保护中具有重要作用.通过条件价值法(contingent valuation method, CVM),研究了我国居民对于大熊猫的保护意识和支付意愿(willingness to pay, WTP),进而对大熊猫总体存在价值进行了评估.问卷调查选择在大熊猫栖息地集中分布的四川省进行,采用支付卡式(Payment Card, PC)问卷调查方式,对回收的674份有效问卷进行统计分析.其中非零支付474份,占有效问卷的70.4%.调查表明:人均支付价值为82.7yuan/a,进而得出我国大熊猫总的存在价值为3.67×1010yuan/a.建立支付价值与居民社会经济因子的回归模型,通过AIC(Akaike′s Information Criterion)指数选择最优模型,结果显示对支付价值有显著影响的因子为学历、收入和年龄.其中,支付价值与学历、收入水平呈正相关,与年龄呈负相关.通过对年龄、学历、收入3个因子进行方差分析,得出各因子不同水平支付价值的差异.     

Attitudes toward forest diversity and forest ecosystem services—a cross-cultural comparison between China and Switzerland

Aims Despite the current interest in services provided by ecosystems and the role of biodiversity, the relationship among human attitudes, biodiversity and ecosystem services has hardly been investigated. Moreover, few studies have examined attitudes toward nature in cross-cultural comparisons. This study investigates the attitudes of Chinese and Swiss people, both environmental experts and laypersons, toward forest biodiversity and ecosystem services.Methods Overall, 640 people in China and Switzerland were interviewed with the help of a standardized questionnaire. In each country, the study population was equally divided into an urban (80 city dwellers and 80 environmental science students) and a rural (80 forest visitors and 80 farmers) study group. The 15-minute interviews took place in the cities of Beijing and Zurich and in the rural forested areas of Dujiangyan, Sichuan Province and Lake Sempach, canton Lucerne. Attitudes toward forest biodiversity were investigated with the help of color photographs that depicted both monocultures and species-rich forests typical for China and Switzerland. Attitudes toward ecosystem services were investigated with the help of 13 statements on provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services of forests.Important findings On average, Chinese participants showed no strong preferences for biodiversity, whereas the Swiss clearly preferred species-rich forests over monocultures. However, Chinese environmental science students did prefer species-rich forests and attributed to them a higher conservation value because of their higher biodiversity. Although there were no strong preferences for Chinese versus Swiss forests, all participants correctly answered that Chinese forests are more species rich in terms of plants and animals and thus found them less boring and more interesting, but also less managed, than Swiss forests. All participants highly valued the ecosystem services provided by forests; especially the regulating and supporting ones. Environmental science students and farmers placed more importance on the provisioning services, whereas city dwellers and forest visitors emphasized more on the regulating services. The disjuncture between the high ecological quality of species-rich forests and their low attractiveness to Chinese study participants points to a potential conflict between conservation policies and the public's preferences. A better communication of ecosystem services provided by forest biodiversity to the public might change these preferences in favor of ecological quality, as already observed among Chinese environmental science students.     

A note on communicating environmental change for non-market valuation

Communicating change in environmental condition is a critical component of non-market valuation studies. However, the underlying assumptions and implications associated with alternative ways of expressing change in environmental condition for surveys are rarely discussed in the literature. Our review found no cases where alternative formulations were both discussed and tested. In this note we report on our multi-disciplinary analysis of how best to express such change. We interrogate the meaning of, and inferences from, four formulations for quantitative expressions, or metrics, of environmental indicators that are used in the field of ecology and we then evaluate their usefulness in non-market valuation. The assumptions and limitations of each formulation are discussed using seven hypothetical cases of change in environmental condition. We show that formulations for expressing change can be grouped based on two inherent philosophies potentially held by people when they consider their preferences for environmental changes: ‘more is better philosophy’ and ‘restoration philosophy’. We contend that, without careful consideration of which philosophy people may apply, it is possible to inadvertently bias respondent choices when a particular formulation is used in a valuation study. If this happens, resulting value estimates will be a poor reflection of what researchers seek. An alternative approach that does not presuppose a philosophy but instead helps reveal a respondent’s philosophy, is proposed.     

自然资本流变及其对生态系统服务价值的演变路径

生态系统服务价值化是将生态系统惠益于人类社会的价值进行量化，以评估生态系统服务状态，便于生态系统监测和管理。自然资本是生态系统服务的来源，结合自然资本视角进行生态系统服务价值化，其成果有利于提高生态系统保护政策制定的精准性和统筹力，有利于创新生态系统服务评估方法。通过梳理自然资本概念的缘起与发展过程，认为自然资本经历了"同义指代"、"边界明晰"、"多领域交汇"和"隐喻多义"四个阶段逐步丰富的过程。当今针对自然资本研究的三种主流视角，即将自然资本视为"产生经济价值的资产"、"产生服务流的存量"和"金融资本"为生态系统服务的价值化提供了多种途径。生态系统服务价值化的过程要体现可持续发展的基本目标，保证自然资本的稳定，维持人类社会代际公平。以此为前提，鼓励生态系统价值化视角的多样性。价值化途径应关注生态系统服务的时空动态变化、多种服务协同作用和供需权衡。生态系统服务价值化是自然资本金融杠杆化的推手，应警惕有可能带来的金融风险和生态风险。     

Assessing recreational benefits as an economic indicator for an industrial harbour report card

Industrial harbours are a complex interface between environmental, economic and social systems. Trying to manage the social and economic needs of the community while maintaining the integrity of environmental ecosystems is complicated, as is the identification and evaluation of the various factors that underpin the drivers of economic, community and resource condition. An increasingly popular strategy to deal with the identification and evaluation challenges in complex human-environmental systems is to use a report card system which can be used as a summary assessment tool to monitor the health of aquatic ecosystems. To date though these have largely focused on environmental factors, and it is only very recently that attempts are being made to include social, cultural and economic indicators. There has been limited consensus in the selection of social and economic indicators applied in different aquatic report cards but as recreation is such an important activity, typically some measure of recreation benefit is included. However, there has been no commonality in the measures applied to assess its performance as an economic indicator.This paper is focused on the assessment of recreational benefits as an indicator of economic value in the report card for Gladstone Harbour in Queensland, Australia. It is the first aquatic health report card to include an assessment of the nonmarket value of recreation which makes it a more comprehensive indicator of economic value compared to other report cards based on measures of employment, participation or expenditure. There have now been three consecutive years of reporting (2014–2016) of the Gladstone Harbour report card, and the results indicate that the recreation index appears to be effective in monitoring changes over time.     

Évaluation de la réponse thérapeutique par tomographie par émission de positons (TEP) au fluoro-désoxyglucose (FDG) en oncologie-hématologie

¹⁸Fluoro-deoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) is an imaging technique which studies the cellular glucidic metabolism. It is particularly indicated in oncology, especially for cancer diagnosis (with a potential prognosis interest) or detection of recurrence. Because of its functional approach to the tissues, its use has logically evolved into the evaluation of cancer treatments, both for the individual care of patients for clinical trials of new therapies. Also, it tends to displace conventional imaging in this indication, whose main limitation is not to assess the viability of residual masses, potentially necrotic or fibrous after treatment. However, the use of FDG-PET requires a rigorous methodology for both the exams achievement but also for the quality of their interpretation, including the choice of the comparison tool. Based on an increasing literature on the subject, were published and updated interpretation criteria for both lymphoma and solid cancers. For lymphoma, standardized assessment criteria were proposed in 2007 during an International Harmonize Project (IHP). For solid cancers, Positron Emission tomography Response Criteria In Solid Tumors (PERCIST) recommendations version 1.0 were recently proposed by an American workshop in 2009 in order to clarify and standardize practices.