A phytosociological survey of the Irish Molinio-Arrhenatheretea using computer techniques

Summary The Irish approach to the computer processing of grassland relevés is introduced. A suite of programs in Fortran IV has been developed for the purpose. The preparation and analysis of the relevés using these programs is explained. The cost and ecological effectiveness is discussed. It is concluded that the approach is not radically different to the familiar Braun-Blanquet technique of tabular comparison of relevés.Contribution from the Working Group for Data-Processing in Phytosociology, International Society for Vegetation Science.     

新疆药用延胡索资源调查

作者对新疆维吾尔自治区的9个市、县进行了药用延胡索的资源调查,采集植物标本70余份,弄清药用种类主要是3种,即Corydalis glaucescens Regel,C.ledebouriana Kir.et Kar.和C.schanginii(Pall.)Fedtsch.;初步了解了3种药用延胡索植物的分布状况,并对块茎中总生物碱的含量作了分析。     

An assessment of the importance of emergent and floating-leaved macrophytes to trophic status in the Loosdrecht lakes (The Netherlands)

The potential importance of the six major emergent and floating-leaved macrophyte species in recycling of sediment phosphorus in the Loosdrecht lakes was studied. Representative plant samples were collected at the time of maximum biomass, and analysed for biomass and carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus contents. Species cover was determined by aerial photography.Total cover in the seven lakes studied ranged between 2 and 26 percent. For the four main species, biomass per unit area increased with lake trophic status. Consistent differences in C, N and P contents per unit biomass were not observed. Although cover values were small, significant amounts of C, N and P were contained in the macrophytes when compared with maximum sestonic content.Potential P loads from macrophyte decay were calculated. In Lake Loosdrecht, the P load represented 15 percent of current external P inputs. The potential importance of macrophyte decay to P recycling in the other lakes is greater.Decay of macrophyte species at the end of the growing season appears to affect autumnal nutrient and chlorophyll a levels in the water column of some lakes. The re-establishment of submerged species following lake restoration may increase the importance of this pathway in the lakes.     

Respiratory behaviour,oxygen consumption and relative dependence on aerial respiration in the African lungfish (Protopterus annectens,owen) and an air-breathing teleost (Clarias lazera,C.).

The relative dependence on branchial and pulmonary organs was studied in the African lungfish P. annectens and in the catfish Clarias lazera. The frequency of pulmonary ventilation varied, in the normal state, with the activity and age of the fish and followed a circadian rhythm. Small specimens of both species exhibited a higher branchial ventilatory rate than older specimens and depended largely on aquatic O₂ uptake (over 85% and 90% in Clarias and Protopterus respectively). The dependence on aerial respiration appeared to develop gradually with age in Clarias but occurred over a limited age-range (200–300 g) in Protopterus. In mature fish (over 400 g), pulmonary respiration constituted 50–60% of the total in Clarias and 80–85% in Protopterus. Partitioning of O₂ uptake between air and water depended on the O₂ content of the water and that of O₂ and CO₂ in the pulmonary organs. Protopterus and Clarias surfaced for air when the O₂ content of the respiratory organs was reduced to 90% and 85% (of that immediately following an air-breath) respectively. An increase in the pulmonary O₂ content lengthened the apnoeic period and reduced pulmonary respiration more markedly in Protopterus than in Clarias whereas an increase of that of CO₂ produced the reverse effects.     

Pond Acoustic Sampling Scheme: A draft protocol for rapid acoustic data collection in small waterbodies

1. Freshwater conservation is vital to the maintenance of global biodiversity. Ponds are a critical, yet often under‐recognized, part of this, contributing to overall ecosystem functioning and diversity. They provide habitats for a range of aquatic, terrestrial, and amphibious life, often including rare and declining species.
2. Effective, rapid, and accessible survey methods are needed to enable evidence‐based conservation action, but freshwater taxa are often viewed as “difficult”—and few specialist surveyors are available. Datasets on ponds are therefore limited in their spatiotemporal coverage.
3. With the advent of new recording technologies, acoustic survey methods are becoming increasingly available to researchers, citizen scientists, and conservation practitioners. They can be an effective and noninvasive approach for gathering data on target species, assemblages, and environmental variables. However, freshwater applications are lagging behind those in terrestrial and marine spheres, and as an emergent method, research studies have employed a multitude of different sampling protocols.
4. We propose the Pond Acoustic Sampling Scheme (PASS), a simple protocol to allow a standardized minimal sample to be collected rapidly from small waterbodies, alongside environmental and methodological metadata. This sampling scheme can be incorporated into a variety of survey designs and is intended to allow access to a wide range of participants, without requiring complicated or prohibitively expensive equipment.
5. Adoption of this sampling protocol would enable consistent sound recordings to be gathered by researchers and conservation organizations, and allow the development of landscape‐scale surveys, data sharing, and collaboration within an expanding freshwater ecoacoustic community—rather than individual approaches that produce incompatible datasets. The compilation of standardized data would improve the prospects for effective research into the soundscapes of small waterbodies and aid freshwater conservation efforts.

     

Perception of livestock ecosystem services in grazing areas

This study investigates how the ecosystem services (ES) linked to livestock grazing are perceived across countries. A total of 82 case studies collected from 42 countries via survey (53.7% cases from Europe and 46.3% from outside of Europe) have been analysed through a multivariate approach. In all, 18 non-provisioning ES were considered. Overall, the reported impacts of livestock grazing on the different ES were much more positive than negative. Notably, a large proportion of respondents reported either positive or very positive impacts for some cultural ES, namely cultural, historic and natural heritage (84%), knowledge systems and educational values (77%), landscape values (74%), and for some supporting and regulating ES, namely habitat provision (66%), nutrient cycling (65%), and bush encroachment/fire control (66%). Based on multiple regression analysis, geographic origin, stakeholder type and species category, as well as protection status of the grazing area, had significant effects on the perception of the impacts. Respondents reported those impacts as more positive in Europe, in protected areas and where several species were present in the grazing area. A significantly larger proportion of respondents reported recognition of ES provided by the grazing livestock population in European countries (40.9%) compared with non-European countries (23.7%). Based on the survey responses it appears that in non-European countries absence of formal recognition, especially by policy makers, is a major challenge for the continued provision of ES in grazing systems. In Europe, where such recognition is already often included in legislation, the long-term sustainability of related policies and incentives to provide such services is viewed as a major issue by the respondents.     

Environment outweighs the effects of fishing in regulating demersal community structure in an exploited marine ecosystem

Global climate change has already caused bottom temperatures of coastal marine ecosystems to increase worldwide. These ecosystems face many pressures, of which fishing is one of the most important. While consequences of global warming on commercial species are studied extensively, the importance of the increase in bottom temperature and of variation in fishing effort is more rarely considered together in these exploited ecosystems. Using a 17 year time series from an international bottom trawl survey, we investigated covariations of an entire demersal ecosystem (101 taxa) with the environment in the Celtic Sea. Our results showed that over the past two decades, biotic communities in the Celtic Sea were likely controlled more by environmental variables than fisheries, probably due to its long history of exploitation. At the scale of the entire zone, relations between taxa and the environment remained stable over the years, but at a local scale, in the center of the Celtic Sea, dynamics were probably driven by interannual variation in temperature. Fishing was an important factor structuring species assemblages at the beginning of the time series (2000) but decreased in importance after 2009. This was most likely caused by a change in spatial distribution of fishing effort, following a change in targeted taxa from nephrops to deeper water anglerfish that did not covary with fishing effort. Increasing bottom temperatures could induce additional changes in the coming years, notably in the cold‐water commercial species cod, hake, nephrops, and American plaice. We showed that analyzing covariation is an effective way to screen a large number of taxa and highlight those that may be most susceptible to future simultaneous increases in temperature and changes in exploitation pattern by fisheries. This information can be particularly relevant for ecosystem assessments.     

Assessing the effectiveness of foraging radius models for seabird distributions using biotelemetry and survey data

Relatively simple foraging radius models have the potential to generate predictive distributions for a large number of species rapidly, thus providing a cost-effective alternative to large-scale surveys or complex modelling approaches. Their effectiveness, however, remains largely untested. Here we compare foraging radius distribution models for all breeding seabirds in Ireland, to distributions of empirical data collected from tracking studies and aerial surveys. At the local/colony level, we compared foraging radius distributions to GPS tracking data from seabirds with short (Atlantic puffin Fratercula arctica, and razorbill Alca torda) and long (Manx shearwater Puffinus puffinus, and European storm-petrel Hydrobates pelagicus) foraging ranges. At the regional/national level, we compared foraging radius distributions to extensive aerial surveys conducted over a two-year period. Foraging radius distributions were significantly positively correlated with tracking data for all species except Manx shearwater. Correlations between foraging radius distributions and aerial survey data were also significant, but generally weaker than those for tracking data. Correlations between foraging radius distributions and aerial survey data were benchmarked against generalised additive models (GAMs) of the aerial survey data that included a range of environmental covariates. While GAM distributions had slightly higher correlations with aerial survey data, the results highlight that the foraging radius approach can be a useful and pragmatic approach for assessing breeding distributions for many seabird species. The approach is likely to have acceptable utility in complex, temporally variable ecosystems and when logistic and financial resources are limited.     

新一代遥感技术助力生态系统生态学研究

随着气候变化和人类活动的加剧, 生态系统正处于剧烈变化中, 生态学家需要从更大的时空尺度去理解生态系统过程和变化规律, 应对全球变化带来的威胁和挑战。传统地面调查方法主要获取的是样方尺度、离散的数据, 难以满足大尺度生态系统研究对数据时空连续性的要求。相比于传统地面调查方法, 遥感技术具有实时获取、重复监测以及多时空尺度的特点, 弥补了传统地面调查方法空间观测尺度有限的缺点。遥感通过分析电磁波信息从而识别地物属性和特征, 反演生态系统组成、能量流动和物质循环过程中的关键要素, 已逐渐成为生态学研究中必不可少的数据来源。近年来, 随着激光雷达、日光诱导叶绿素荧光等新型遥感技术以及无人机、背包等近地面遥感平台的发展, 个人化、定制化的近地面遥感观测逐渐成熟, 新一代遥感技术正在推动遥感信息“二维向三维”的转变, 为传统样地观测与卫星遥感之间搭建了尺度推绎桥梁, 这也给生态系统生态学带来了新的机遇, 推动生态系统生态学向多尺度、多过程、多学科、多途径发展。因此, 该文从生态系统生态学角度出发, 重点关注陆地生态系统中生物组分, 并分别从生态系统类型、结构、功能和生物多样性等方面, 结合作者在实际研究工作中的主要成果和该领域国际前沿动态, 阐述遥感技术在生态系统生态学中的研究现状并指出我国生态系统遥感监测领域发展方向及亟待解决的问题。     

Foraging shifts and visual preadaptation in ecologically diverse bats

Changes in behaviour may initiate shifts to new adaptive zones, with physical adaptations for novel environments evolving later. While new mutations are commonly considered engines of adaptive change, sensory evolution enabling access to new resources might also arise from standing genetic diversity, and even gene loss. We examine the relative contribution of molecular adaptations, measured by positive and relaxed selection, acting on eye‐expressed genes associated with shifts to new adaptive zones in ecologically diverse bats from the superfamily Noctilionoidea. Collectively, noctilionoids display remarkable ecological breadth, from highly divergent echolocation to flight strategies linked to specialized insectivory, the parallel evolution of diverse plant‐based diets (e.g., nectar, pollen and fruit) from ancestral insectivory, and—unusually for echolocating bats—often have large, well‐developed eyes. We report contrasting levels of positive selection in genes associated with the development, maintenance and scope of visual function, tracing back to the origins of noctilionoids and Phyllostomidae (the bat family with most dietary diversity), instead of during shifts to novel diets. Generalized plant visiting was not associated with exceptional molecular adaptation, and exploration of these novel niches took place in an ancestral phyllostomid genetic background. In contrast, evidence for positive selection in vision genes was found at subsequent shifts to either nectarivory or frugivory. Thus, neotropical noctilionoids that use visual cues for identifying food and roosts, as well as for orientation, were effectively preadapted, with subsequent molecular adaptations in nectar‐feeding lineages and the subfamily Stenodermatinae of fig‐eating bats fine‐tuning pre‐existing visual adaptations for specialized purposes.