Developing and testing alien species indicators for Europe

Alien species indicators provide vital information to the biodiversity policy sector on the status-quo and trends of biological invasions and on the efficacy of response measures. Applicable at different geographical scales and organizational levels, alien species indicators struggle with data availability and quality. Based on policy needs and previous work on the global scale, we here present a set of six alien species indicators for Europe, which capture complementary facets of biological invasions in Europe: (a) an combined index of invasion trends, (b) an indicator on pathways of invasions, (c) the Red List Index of Invasive Alien Species (IAS), (d) an indicator of IAS impacts on ecosystem services, (e) trends in incidence of livestock diseases and (f) an indicator on costs for alien species management and research. Each of these indicators has its particular strengths and shortcomings, but combined they allow for a nuanced understanding of the status and trends of biological invasions in Europe. We found that the scale and impact of biological invasions are steadily increasing across all impact indicators, although societal response in recent years has increased. The Red List Index is fit-for-purpose and demonstrates that overall extinction risks (here shown for amphibians in Europe) are increasing. Introduction pathway dynamics have changed, with some pathways decreasing in relevance (e.g., biological control agents) and others increasing (e.g., horticultural trade) providing a leverage for targeted policy and stakeholder response. The IAS indicators presented here for the first time on a continental basis serve as a starting point for future improvements, and as a basis for monitoring the efficacy of the recent EU legislation of IAS. This will need a better workflow for data collection and management. To achieve this, all main actors must work toward improving the interoperability among existing databases and between data holders.     

红细胞分布宽度血小板比率和中性粒细胞淋巴细胞比率在急诊PCI术后冠脉无复流评估中的应用价值

目的:探讨红细胞分布宽度血小板比率(RDW)和中性粒细胞淋巴细胞比率(NLR)预测急诊经皮冠状动脉介入(PCI)术后冠脉无复流的应用价值。方法:选取2016年1月~2016年12月于我院行急诊PCI手术治疗的患者66例为研究对象,检测其治疗前的RDW和NLR,统计其急诊PCI术后冠脉无复流现象的发生情况,比较冠脉无复流和正常血流患者的RDW和NLR,分析患者RDW和NLR与其冠脉无复流的关系及其对冠脉无复流的预测价值。结果:66例患者急诊PCI术后冠脉无复流发生率为30.30%(20/66)。与正常血流患者比较,冠脉无复流患者RDW和NLR均升高(P0.05)。Spearman相关分析结果显示患者RDW和NLR与其冠脉无复流均呈正相关(r=0.826,0.878,P0.05)。进一步ROC曲线分析结果显示急诊PCI术前RDW和NLR联合预测其术后冠脉无复流的的ROC曲线下面积高于二者单独预测。结论:急诊PCI患者RDW和NLR与其术后冠脉无复流密切相关且两者联合预测患者术后冠脉无复流的价值良好,可能作为急诊PCI术后冠脉无复流评估的参考指标。     

Tropical ant communities are in long-term equilibrium

Communities change with time. Studying long-term change in community structure permits deeper understanding of community dynamics, and allows us to forecast community responses to perturbations at local (e.g. fire, secondary succession) and global (e.g. desertification, global warming) spatial scales. Monitoring efforts exploring the temporal dynamics of indicator taxa are therefore a critical part of conservation agendas. Here, the temporal dynamics of the Otongachi leaf litter ant community, occurring in a cloud forest in coastal Ecuador, were explored. By sampling this community six times over eleven years, I assessed how the ant fauna caught by Winkler traps (more diverse and cryptic fauna) and caught by pitfall traps (larger, more mobile fauna) changed over time. The Otongachi leaf litter ant community was dynamic. Although species richness in the community remained constant, temporal turnover of species was high: on average, 51% of the ant species in Winkler traps, and 56% of those in pitfall traps, were replaced with other ant species from one year to the other. Shifts in the rank abundance of species in the community were also large across the eleven years and, on average, shifts in the rank abundance of species collected by Winkler traps doubled those occurring in pitfall traps from one census to the other. In spite of these trends, the Otongachi ant fauna showed no (Winkler) or weak (pitfall) evidence of directional change (towards a new community). Thus, this tropical ant community can be divided in two community compartments. The Winkler compartment composed by a more diverse and cryptic ant fauna appears to be resilient and stable in time. The pitfall compartment composed by larger and more mobile ants may be prone to respond to disturbance. This study suggests that 1) species appearing/disappearing from a site may be rather the rule, difficult to separate from responses to ecological stress. 2) Conclusions made in short-term studies, or studies comparing two (e.g. before and after) snapshots of a community, should thus be revisited. Finally, 3) the ant fauna caught by pitfall traps (a rather simple and cheap survey method) is the most likely community compartment to indicate ecological perturbation. This study adds to the growing evidence that using ants as ecological indicators should incorporate long-term temporal dynamics.     

Are research efforts on Animalia in the South Pacific associated with the conservation status or population trends?

Analyses of knowledge gaps can highlight imbalances in research, encouraging greater proportionality in the distribution of research efforts. In this research we used generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) with the aim to determine if research efforts for the period 2005–2015 for terrestrial vertebrates of Amphibia, Aves, Mammalia and Reptilia in the South Pacific region were correlated with conservation status (critically endangered (CR), endangered (EN), vulnerable (VU), least concern (LC) and near threatened (NT)) or population trends (increasing, stable, decreasing and unknown) through the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) database. Our results showed that research distribution was uneven across different classes. Out of 633623 investigated papers, the average number of publications per species was 43.7, 306.7, 717.6 and 115.3 for Amphibia (284 species), Aves (1306 species), Mammalia (243 species) and Reptilia (400 species), respectively. Consistently, the lower publication effort on Amphibia compared to other taxonomic classes was revealed as significant by GLMM analysis. There was no significant differences in research effort among levels of conservation status. However, we found significantly different publication efforts among population trends of all examined species in that species with “unknown” population trends gained significantly lower researchers’ attention compared to species with “decreasing” trend. Results also indicated that, although it was not significant, the highest attention is given to species with “increasing” population trend over all taxonomic classes. Using the Information Theoretic approach we also generated a set of competing models to identify most important factors influencing research efforts, revealing that the highest ranked model included taxonomic class and population trend.     

Disturbance‐modulated symbioses in termitophily

Symbiosis, the living‐together of unlike organisms, underlies every major transition in evolution and pervades most ecological dynamics. Among examples of symbioses, the simultaneous occupation of a termite nest by its builder termites and intruding invertebrate species (so‐called termitophily) provides suitable macroscopic scenarios for the study of species coexistence in confined environments. Current evidence on termitophily abounds for dynamics occurring at the interindividual level within the termitarium, but is insufficient for broader scales such as the community and the landscape. Here, we inspect the effects of abiotic disturbance on termitophile presence and function in termitaria at these broader scales. To do so, we censused the termitophile communities inhabiting 30 termitaria of distinct volumes which had been exposed to increasing degrees of fire‐induced disturbance in a savanna‐like ecosystem in southeastern Brazil. We provide evidence that such an abiotic disturbance can ease the living‐together of termitophiles and termites. Putative processes facilitating these symbioses, however, varied according to the invader. For nonsocial invaders, disturbance seemed to boost coexistence with termites via the habitat amelioration that termitaria provided under wildfire, as suggested by the positive correlation between disturbance degree and termitophile abundance and richness. As for social invaders (ants), disturbance seemed to enhance associational defenses with termites, as suggested by the negative correlation between the presence of ant colonies and the richness and abundance of other termitarium‐cohabiting termitophiles. It is then apparent that disturbance‐modulated distinct symbioses in these termite nests.