Response of three lotic assemblages to riparian and catchment‐scale land use: implications for designing catchment monitoring programmes

1. Although many studies have focussed on the effects of catchment land use on lotic systems, the importance of broad (catchment) and fine (segment/reach) scale effects on stream assemblages remain poorly understood. 2. Nine biological metrics for macrophytes (498 sites), benthic macroinvertebrates (491) and fish (478) of lowland and mountain streams in four ecoregions of France and Germany were related to catchment and riparian buffer land use using partial Redundancy Analysis and Boosted Regression Trees (BRTs). 3. Lotic fauna was better correlated (mean max., r = 0.450) than flora (r = 0.277) to both scales of land use: the strongest correlations were noted for mountain streams. BRTs revealed strong non‐linear relationships between mountain assemblage metrics and land use. Correlations increased with increasing buffer lengths, suggesting the importance of near‐stream land use on biotic assemblages. 4. Several metrics changed markedly between 10–20% (mountain ecoregions) and 40–45% (lowland) of arable land use, irrespective of the buffer size. At mountain sites with >10% catchment arable land use, metric values differed between sites with <30% and sites with >30% forest in the near‐stream riparian area. 5. These findings support the role of riparian land use in catchment management; however, differences between mountain and lowland ecoregions support the need for ecoregion‐specific management.     

Some analytical results about a simple reaction-diffusion system for morphogenesis

Summary The reaction-diffusion system considered involves only one nonlinear term and is a gradient system. In a bifurcation analysis for the equilibrium states, the global existence of infinitely many solution branches can be shown by the method of Ljusternik-Schnirelmann. Their stability is studied. Using a Ljapunov functional it can be shown that the solutions of the time-dependent system converge to the equilibrium states.     

罗汉果组培繁殖的技术要点

报道罗汉果组培繁殖的各项主要技术要点,包括组培条件、培养基的配制、外植体的选取与消毒、接种与培养、种源保存、炼苗与移栽、苗木包装与运输等。提出了5种培养基参考配方,即茎段诱导培养:MS+BA0.5～1.0mg/L+IAA(NAA)0.05～0.1mg/L+白糖3%+琼脂4.5g/L,pH5.8;茎尖诱导培养:MS+BA0.5～1.0mg/L+NAA0.05～0.1mg/L+椰子水100mL+白糖3%+琼脂4.5mg/L,pH5.8;继代培养(丛生芽方式):MS+BA0.3～0.7mg/L+NAA0.05/IAA0.1mg/L+白糖3%+琼脂4.5mg/L,pH5.8;继代培养(微型扦插方式):MS+BA0.1mg/L+IAA0.3mg/L+活性炭0.07g/L+白糖3%+琼脂4.5mg/L,pH5.8;生根培养:MS+BA0.07mg/L+IBA0.15mg/L+IAA0.1mg/L+活性炭0.1g/L+白糖3%+琼脂4.5mg/L,pH5.8。分析了外植体培养过程中可能出现的不良状况的原因并提出预防措施,明确了炼苗移栽的适宜条件并制定出相应的管理方法。形成了一套较为完整的罗汉果组培苗繁殖生产技术规程。     

A new method for identifying rapid decline dynamics in wild vertebrate populations

Tracking trends in the abundance of wildlife populations is a sensitive method for assessing biodiversity change due to the short time‐lag between human pressures and corresponding shifts in population trends. This study tests for proposed associations between different types of human pressures and wildlife population abundance decline‐curves and introduces a method to distinguish decline trajectories from natural fluctuations in population time‐series. First, we simulated typical mammalian population time‐series under different human pressure types and intensities and identified significant distinctions in population dynamics. Based on the concavity of the smoothed population trend and the algebraic function which was the closest fit to the data, we determined those differences in decline dynamics that were consistently attributable to each pressure type. We examined the robustness of the attribution of pressure type to population decline dynamics under more realistic conditions by simulating populations under different levels of environmental stochasticity and time‐series data quality. Finally, we applied our newly developed method to 124 wildlife population time‐series and investigated how those threat types diagnosed by our method compare to the specific threatening processes reported for those populations. We show how wildlife population decline curves can be used to discern between broad categories of pressure or threat types, but do not work for detailed threat attributions. More usefully, we find that differences in population decline curves can reliably identify populations where pressure is increasing over time, even when data quality is poor, and propose this method as a cost‐effective technique for prioritizing conservation actions between populations.     

2种织圆网蜘蛛个体大小与蛛网粘丝区面积间关系

在不惊扰蜘蛛的情况下对悦目金蛛Argiope amoena和圆尾肖蛸Tetragnatha vermiformis的个体大小与蛛网粘丝区面积问的相关性进行了野外观察。主要测量了蜘蛛体长、蛛网粘丝区直径、蛛网框丝固着点间最大距离、网中枢到地面或水面距离、网平面与水平线的夹角等参数;另外还对蛛网框丝固着点间最大距离作为圆网蛛网址选择行为量化指标的可行性进行了探讨。结果表明,2种蜘蛛体长与蛛网粘丝区面积以及蜘蛛体长与蛛网框丝固着点间最大距离均呈现明显的正相关。悦目金蛛体长与蛛网粘丝区面积的相关性高于圜尾肖蛸,这可能与悦目金蛛在其生境中易于找到框丝固着点、而圆尾肖蛸在其生境中较难找到框丝同着点有关;     

Rate of forcing and the forecastability of critical transitions

Critical transitions are qualitative changes of state that occur when a stochastic dynamical system is forced through a critical point. Many critical transitions are preceded by characteristic fluctuations that may serve as model‐independent early warning signals, implying that these events may be predictable in applications ranging from physics to biology. In nonbiological systems, the strength of such early warning signals has been shown partly to be determined by the speed at which the transition occurs. It is currently unknown whether biological systems, which are inherently high dimensional and typically display low signal‐to‐noise ratios, also exhibit this property, which would have important implications for how ecosystems are managed, particularly where the forces exerted on a system are anthropogenic. We examine whether the rate of forcing can alter the strength of early warning signals in (1) a model exhibiting a fold bifurcation where a state shift is driven by the harvesting of individuals, and (2) a model exhibiting a transcritical bifurcation where a state shift is driven by increased grazing pressure. These models predict that the rate of forcing can alter the detectability of early warning signals regardless of the underlying bifurcation the system exhibits, but that this result may be more pronounced in fold bifurcations. These findings have important implications for the management of biological populations, particularly harvested systems such as fisheries, and suggest that knowing the class of bifurcations a system will manifest may help discriminate between true‐positive and false‐positive signals.     

Zero‐modified Poisson model: Bayesian approach,influence diagnostics,and an application to a Brazilian leptospirosis notification data

In this paper, a Bayesian method for inference is developed for the zero‐modified Poisson (ZMP) regression model. This model is very flexible for analyzing count data without requiring any information about inflation or deflation of zeros in the sample. A general class of prior densities based on an information matrix is considered for the model parameters. A sensitivity study to detect influential cases that can change the results is performed based on the Kullback–Leibler divergence. Simulation studies are presented in order to illustrate the performance of the developed methodology. Two real datasets on leptospirosis notification in Bahia State (Brazil) are analyzed using the proposed methodology for the ZMP model.