Extending the Namibian protected area network to safeguard hotspots of endemism and diversity

Namibia's state protected area network (PAN) covers 13.8% of the country's land area, but is seriously inadequate as a basis for effective biodiversity conservation. The early parks system was not designed with biological diversity in mind, and reflects instead a history of ideological, economic and veterinary considerations. Currently, parks in the Namib Desert biome make up 69% of the PAN, while savanna and woodland biomes are somewhat underrepresented (7.5 and 8.4% of their respective land areas), and the Karoo biome is badly underrepresented (1.6%). Four of 14 desert vegetation types are comprehensively protected, with 67 to 94% representation in the PAN, yet six savanna types have 0 to 2% representation by area. Mountain Savanna, a vegetation type unique to Namibia, is wholly unprotected. The status of two marine reserves, which in theory protect only 0.01% of Namibia's marine environment, needs clarification and augmentation with new reserves. Nearly 85% of Namibia's land is zoned for agriculture, so effective biodiversity protection means working outside the PAN to improve the sustainability and diversity of farming practices. Wildlife conservancies on commercial and communal farmlands show excellent potential to mitigate the ecological skew in the state PAN, with the ecological management of large areas being decentralized to rural communities in habitats otherwise neglected for conservation. Two important endemism zones, the Kaoko escarpment and coastal plain and the Sperrgebiet succulent steppe, plus the species-rich Caprivi area, offer three valuable opportunities for regional consolidation of protected areas into transboundary 'peace parks' or biosphere reserves.     

海洋生物抗氧化剂研究进展

综述海洋生物抗氧化剂研究现状,海洋生物抗氧化剂的种类,讨论了海洋生物抗氧化剂的抗氧化机理,展示了从海洋生物中寻找抗氧化剂的广阔前景。     

海洋生态系统服务的产生与实现

在阐述海洋生态系统服务内涵的基础上,分析了海洋生态系统服务的产生过程和实现途径,将海洋生态系统每一组分和(或)功能与其所提供的服务联系起来,给出了从每种组分和(或)功能到相应的服务所经过的生理生态过程.结果表明,海洋生态系统的服务一部分是生物组分和(或)系统整体直接提供,另一部分是通过系统功能产生.系统内的各种生理生态过程不直接产生服务.服务的实现包括海洋生态系统途径和海洋生态经济系统途径两种.     

Phylogeography and environmental diversification of a highly adaptable marine amphipod, Gammarus duebeni

Genetic diversity and phylogeographic population structure in the gammarid amphipod, Gammarus duebeni, were investigated across its broad latitudinal distribution in the NE and NW Atlantic by analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequence. Gammarus duebeni has exceptional tolerance of salinity change and inhabits environments ranging from marine to freshwater. The longstanding debate on whether there are distinct marine and freshwater subspecies was assessed by sampling populations from sites characterized by different salinities. Our sequence data demonstrates that there are two major lineages, with little internal geographic structuring. Evidence is provided to suggest a pre-glacial divergence of these two clades, involving segregation between a region historically associated with the freshwater form and the majority of the marine localities on both sides of the Atlantic. A modern contact zone between the marine and freshwater forms is proposed in western Britain.     

Phages of the marine cyanobacterial picophytoplankton

Cyanobacteria of the genera Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus dominate the prokaryotic component of the picophytoplankton in the oceans. It is still less than 10 years since the discovery of phages that infect marine Synechococcus and the beginning of the characterisation of these phages and assessment of their ecological impact. Estimations of the contribution of phages to Synechococcus mortality are highly variable, but there is clear evidence that phages exert a significant selection pressure on Synechococcus community structure. In turn, there are strong selection pressures on the phage community, in terms of both abundance and composition. This review focuses on the factors affecting the diversity of cyanophages in the marine environment, cyanophage interactions with their hosts, and the selective pressures in the marine environment that affect cyanophage evolutionary biology.     

Regional effects as important determinants of local diversity in both marine and terrestrial systems

Community ecologists have struggled to create unified theories across diverse ecosystems, but it has been difficult to acertain whether marine and terrestrial communities differ in the mechanisms responsible for structure and dynamics. One apparent difference between marine and terrestrial ecology is that the influence of regional processes on local populations and communities is better established in the marine literature. We examine three potential explanations: 1) influential early studies emphasized local interactions in terrestrial communities and regional dispersal in marine communities. 2) regional‐scale processes are actually more important in marine than in terrestrial communities. 3) recruitment from a regional species pool is easier to study in marine than terrestrial communities. We conclude that these are interrelated, but that the second and especially the third explanations are more important than the first. We also conclude that in both marine and terrestrial systems, there are ways to improve our understanding of regional influences on local community diversity. In particular, we advocate examining local vs regional diversity relationships at localities within environmentally similar regions that differ in their diversity either because of their sizes or their varying degrees of isolation from a species source.     

Drug Discovery from Marine Microbes

The marine environment has been a source of more than 20,000 inspirational natural products discovered over the past 50 years. From these efforts, 9 approved drugs and 12 current clinical trial agents have been discovered, either as natural products or as molecules inspired from the natural product structure. To a significant degree, these have come from collections of marine invertebrates largely obtained from shallow-water tropical ecosystems. However, there is a growing recognition that marine invertebrates are oftentimes populated with enormous quantities of “associated” or symbiotic microorganisms and that microorganisms are the true metabolic sources of these most valuable of marine natural products. Also, because of the inherently multidisciplinary nature of this field, a high degree of innovation is characteristic of marine natural product drug discovery efforts.     

Exploitation of marine bacteria for production of gold nanoparticles

Background

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have found wide range of applications in electronics, biomedical engineering, and chemistry owing to their exceptional opto-electrical properties. Biological synthesis of gold nanoparticles by using plant extracts and microbes have received profound interest in recent times owing to their potential to produce nanoparticles with varied shape, size and morphology. Marine microorganisms are unique to tolerate high salt concentration and can evade toxicity of different metal ions. However, these marine microbes are not sufficiently explored for their capability of metal nanoparticle synthesis. Although, marine water is one of the richest sources of gold in the nature, however, there is no significant publication regarding utilization of marine micro-organisms to produce gold nanoparticles. Therefore, there might be a possibility of exploring marine bacteria as nanofactories for AuNP biosynthesis.

Results

In the present study, marine bacteria are exploited towards their capability of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) production. Stable, monodisperse AuNP formation with around 10?nm dimension occur upon exposure of HAuCl₄ solution to whole cells of a novel strain of Marinobacter pelagius, as characterized by polyphasic taxonomy. Nanoparticles synthesized are characterized by Transmission electron microscopy, Dynamic light scattering and UV-visible spectroscopy.

Conclusion

The potential of marine organisms in biosynthesis of AuNPs are still relatively unexplored. Although, there are few reports of gold nanoparticles production using marine sponges and sea weeds however, there is no report on the production of gold nanoparticles using marine bacteria. The present work highlighted the possibility of using the marine bacterial strain of Marinobacter pelagius to achieve a fast rate of nanoparticles synthesis which may be of high interest for future process development of AuNPs. This is the first report of AuNP synthesis by marine bacteria.     

中国沿海省区海洋绿色发展测度及影响机理

海洋绿色发展是海洋高质量发展的重要内容,坚持生态优先和资源可持续的绿色发展模式对于海洋可持续的意义重大。在梳理了海洋绿色发展概念与内涵基础上,以沿海11省市为研究对象,基于2006-2017年沿海各省市的面板数据,建立海洋绿色发展评价指标体系,通过可变模糊识别模型对海洋绿色发展水平进行测度,并运用Arcgis软件和马尔可夫空间模型对其进行时空演变分析,最后运用面板数据模型进行影响因素分析。结果表明：①2006-2017年我国海洋绿色发展水平一直保持增长趋势,总体提高了19.6%,但整体仍呈中等水平,且地区差异明显。在空间分布上,空间集聚特征依然明显,东南沿海地区总体海洋绿色发展水平相对较高,西南和东北部分地区海洋绿色发展水平相对较低。②从时空演化特征来看,上海、天津、山东的海洋绿色发展水平相对较高,河北、广西的海洋绿色发展水平相对较低。区域背景对海洋绿色发展类型转移具有显著影响,高水平区域背景对海洋绿色发展水平增长具有辐射、促进作用,而低水平区域背景对增长具有制约、减缓作用。③从外部因素来看,政府调控、陆域经济水平和开放程度对海洋绿色发展有正向显著影响,环境治理有负向显著影响;从内部因素来看,海洋产业结构、海洋管理和海洋资源利用都有正向显著影响。根据总结以上结论,针对不同地区的海洋绿色发展情况提出不同的发展途径与对策,为海洋绿色发展提供科学的参考依据。     

Biochemical aspects of pressure tolerance in marine mammals

Some marine mammals can dive to depths approaching 2000 m. At these hydrostatic pressures (200 atm), some fish species show alterations in enzyme structure and function that make them pressure-tolerant. Do marine mammals also possess biochemical adaptations to withstand such pressures? In theory, biochemical alterations might occur at the control of enzymatic pathways, by impacting cell membrane fluidity changes or at a higher level, such as cellular metabolism. Studies of marine mammal tissues show evidence of all of these changes, but the results are not consistent across species or diving depth. This review discusses whether the elevated body temperature of marine mammals imparts pressure tolerance at the biochemical level, whether there are cell membrane structural differences in marine mammals and whether whole, living cells from marine mammals alter their metabolism when pressure stressed. We conclude that temperature alone is probably not protective against pressure and that cell membrane composition data are not conclusive. Whole cell studies suggest that marine mammals either respond positively to pressure or are not impacted by pressure. However, the range of tissue types and enzyme systems that have been studied is extremely limited and needs to be expanded before more general conclusions about how these mammals tolerate elevated pressures on a biochemical level can be drawn.     

The use of marine bacteria in mutagenicity assays

Mutagenic pollution of environment is a global and important problem. This includes marine environment. Although many mutagenicity assays have been developed, there are specific problems with testing marine water and sediments for mutagenic contamination. One of them is the fact that most of genetically modified strains used in commonly available microbiological mutagenicity assays, like Escherichia coli or Salmonella, survive relatively poorly in marine waters, especially those of higher salinity. Thus, alternative assays have been developed, in which bacteria occurring naturally in marine habitats are employed. These assays, reviewed in this article, appear to be useful in testing not only marine samples but also can be used in other approaches, which involve detection and estimation of the amount of mutagenic compounds.     

Thinking outside the barrier: neutral and adaptive divergence in Indo-Pacific coral reef faunas

Population divergence in marine species frequently occurs where there is no conspicuous geographic feature to mark a population boundary. In the absence of a discernible barrier to gene flow, strong conclusions about the processes that drive population divergence in the ocean are often elusive. Because our knowledge of patterns far outpaces our understanding of processes, there is a need to expand hypotheses regarding population divergence in marine species. Here, I posit that certain population-level processes (range expansion, spatial diffusion constraints and metapopulation dynamics) are primary causes of spatial structuring in marine populations rather than auxiliary factors that aid divergence across an incomplete physical barrier to gene flow. In particular, I use examples from Indo-Pacific coral reef organisms to illustrate this point. In connection, spatial patterns of adaptive divergence are unlikely to be correlated with patterns of selectively neutral divergence in many cases, as the processes affecting adaptive and neutral genetic markers are different.     

海洋生物礁类型、生态功能及其生态修复

海洋生物礁是由具有造礁能力的海洋生物聚集而成的一种三维礁体结构,其形成改变了海底地貌、增加了不同尺度上的地形复杂性,为其他海洋生物提供了栖息地并维持了生物多样性。近年来,由于自然因素和人为因素影响,海洋生物礁受到了严重威胁,已成为海洋生态保护和修复领域的重要研究对象。综述了海洋生物礁的类型、生态功能及其生态修复的研究进展。根据形成海洋生物礁的优势造礁生物种类,将海洋生物礁分为海藻礁、海绵礁、刺胞动物礁、贝类礁和多毛类礁,其优势造礁生物分别是珊瑚藻和仙掌藻、钙质海绵和硅质海绵、造礁珊瑚、牡蛎、龙介虫。目前国内对海洋生物礁的全面了解相对较少,主要集中在珊瑚礁和牡蛎礁。海洋生物礁的生态功能主要有海岸防护、提供栖息地、净化水体、固碳作用和能量耦合等。全球变暖和海洋酸化等全球气候变化以及海洋污染、破坏性渔业捕捞、海岸工程、水产养殖和敌害生物等自然和人为因素对海洋生物礁构成了严重威胁。海洋生物礁的生态修复方法分为两类：在退化生物礁区投放造礁生物逐渐成礁,投放人工礁体补充造礁生物逐渐成礁。针对海洋生物礁保护和修复的需要,提出下一步应加强海洋造礁生物生态特征、海洋造礁生物种群丧失因素和海洋生物礁保护与...     

Phylogeography and marine retention

A number of studies now point to the association of patterns of phylogeography with discontinuities in coastal current patterns. If such phylogeographic patterns are indicative of populations that retain local diversity, as has been predicted by recent modelling, such results may be of use in marine reserve planning. Here we show that there is a distributional correlation on the Pacific coast of North America between marine reserve placement and phylogeographic patterns. A number of factors could contribute to this correlation, but its existence suggests the utility of genetic studies in marine conservation planning.     

A reappraisal of the concept of metabolic cold adaptation in polar marine invertebrates

The concept of 'metabolic cold adaptation', namely that polar marine ectotherms are adapted in having an elevated basal metabolic rate, has been examined in the light of recent biochemical, physiological and ecological data for Antarctic marine organisms. It is now clear that marine invertebrates from Antarctic waters are characterized by slow growth rates, low basal metabolism and reduced annual reproductive effort, and there is thus no clear evidence of the traditional view of an elevated metabolic rate. By analogy with fish, protein synthesis rates are probably also low. This suggests that the major feature of cold adaptation is a reduction in the individual total annual energy intake in comparison with ecologically similar organisms from warm water. This allows a high standing crop of suspension feeders to develop, and low temperature is thus a significant factor in the successful widespread adoption of typical K-strategies in Antarctic marine invertebrates.     

RNA viruses in the sea

Viruses are ubiquitous in the sea and appear to outnumber all other forms of marine life by at least an order of magnitude. Through selective infection, viruses influence nutrient cycling, community structure, and evolution in the ocean. Over the past 20 years we have learned a great deal about the diversity and ecology of the viruses that constitute the marine virioplankton, but until recently the emphasis has been on DNA viruses. Along with expanding knowledge about RNA viruses that infect important marine animals, recent isolations of RNA viruses that infect single-celled eukaryotes and molecular analyses of the RNA virioplankton have revealed that marine RNA viruses are novel, widespread, and genetically diverse. Discoveries in marine RNA virology are broadening our understanding of the biology, ecology, and evolution of viruses, and the epidemiology of viral diseases, but there is still much that we need to learn about the ecology and diversity of RNA viruses before we can fully appreciate their contributions to the dynamics of marine ecosystems. As a step toward making sense of how RNA viruses contribute to the extraordinary viral diversity in the sea, we summarize in this review what is currently known about RNA viruses that infect marine organisms.     

Gene transfer in the marine environment

Abstract This review summarises the literature on bacterial gene transfer in marine ecosystems. Relevant experiments carried out in model systems are also included. Prerequisites for the main gene transfer mechanisms, transformation, transduction and conjugation are discussed, such as concentrations of extracellular DNA in marine waters, numbers of bacteriophages in sea water and frequency of plasmids in marine bacteria. Transfer of chromosomal genes as well as plasmids are considered. We also discuss the possibility that gene transfer is more frequent in surface-associated bacterial communities. Examples of relevant studies using various solid surfaces and from the air-water interface are summarized. We suggest that there is a higher ‘flow-rate’ of genetic information through surface-associated communities compared to bulk water communities.     

我国海洋抗肿瘤药物的产业化出路

海洋富含结构新颖的抗肿瘤活性物质,已成为全世界普遍关注的研究热点。国际已上市的海洋抗肿瘤药物有阿糖胞苷(Cytarabine)、曲贝替定(Ecteinascidin-743)、甲磺酸艾日布林(Eribulin mesylate)等,还有许多源自海洋生物的抗肿瘤候选药物正在进行临床前和临床研究。我国海洋抗肿瘤物质研究成果在国际上占有相当份额,但与产业化严重脱节。通过了解国内外海洋抗肿瘤药物的研究进展和产业方向,分析了我国海洋抗肿瘤药物产业化过程存在的药源开发不足、知识产权缺乏、资金投入不足、临床周期长等问题,提出了以市场需求,多学科相互交叉为基础,产学研合作模式为主体的自主知识产权药物研究体系,从关键技术、产品市场和产业政策等方面为加速我国海洋抗肿瘤药物的产业化提供有益思考。     

海洋工程生态损害评估与补偿——以厦门杏林跨海大桥为例

随着海岸带地区经济的发展、人口的增加和城市化程度的加快,日益增多的各类海洋工程已经或者正在损害海洋与海岸带生态系统为人类提供各种产品和服务的能力,严重威胁到人类健康和海洋经济的可持续发展。实施海洋生态损害补偿制度,即让生态损害责任方承担生态损害的全部成本,是解决海洋生态损害问题的有效途径之一。建立了海洋工程生态损害评估框架和生态损害补偿标准估算模型,并成功运用于厦门杏林跨海大桥的案例研究。结果表明,在2%的贴现率下,杏林大桥生态补偿标准为1739万元,远高于政府实际征收的补偿金额600万元。该评估框架信息需求量小,成本低且简单易行,在小规模海洋工程的生态损害评估与补偿方面有良好的应用前景。     

Antarctica: The final frontier for marine biological invasions

Antarctica is experiencing significant ecological and environmental change, which may facilitate the establishment of non‐native marine species. Non‐native marine species will interact with other anthropogenic stressors affecting Antarctic ecosystems, such as climate change (warming, ocean acidification) and pollution, with irreversible ramifications for biodiversity and ecosystem services. We review current knowledge of non‐native marine species in the Antarctic region, the physical and physiological factors that resist establishment of non‐native marine species, changes to resistance under climate change, the role of legislation in limiting marine introductions, and the effect of increasing human activity on vectors and pathways of introduction. Evidence of non‐native marine species is limited: just four marine non‐native and one cryptogenic species that were likely introduced anthropogenically have been reported freely living in Antarctic or sub‐Antarctic waters, but no established populations have been reported; an additional six species have been observed in pathways to Antarctica that are potentially at risk of becoming invasive. We present estimates of the intensity of ship activity across fishing, tourism and research sectors: there may be approximately 180 vessels and 500+ voyages in Antarctic waters annually. However, these estimates are necessarily speculative because relevant data are scarce. To facilitate well‐informed policy and management, we make recommendations for future research into the likelihood of marine biological invasions in the Antarctic region.