Reptile Ownership in Balkan Countries: Demographics and Reliance on Veterinary Advice

The objective of the research was to determine the profile of reptile owners (n = 238) in terms of their socio-demographic characteristics and evaluations of veterinarians’ expertise. Reptile owners living in four non-EU Balkan countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia) were randomly selected from two social networks. Statistically significant differences were found in snake, lizard, and turtle owners (p < 0.05) in terms of gender, employment status, and monthly earnings. Male owners of reptiles were slightly more numerous (52%) compared with female owners (48%). Sixty-four percent of reptile owners were over 20 years old. The unemployed reptile owners (16%) were about five times fewer in number compared with those who studied at university and those who were employed. Forty-one percent of reptile owners declared high monthly incomes. Forty percent of reptile owners never contacted and had no experience with veterinarians. Fifty-eight percent of reptile owners contacted or visited veterinarians due to the medical condition of their animals, 14% of them contacted veterinarians for advice on reptile keeping, and only 6% did so for a preventive veterinary examination. Forty-seven percent of reptile owners were satisfied with veterinary services. The importance of the results of this survey is that they can provide a basis for adopting legislation on the ownership of reptiles as pet animals, together with being a baseline for monitoring subsequent changes in interest in these animals as pets. The results also identify the need for more dedication from veterinarians in educating reptile owners, and for necessary adjustments in veterinary education.     

Vegetation demographics in Earth System Models: A review of progress and priorities

Numerous current efforts seek to improve the representation of ecosystem ecology and vegetation demographic processes within Earth System Models (ESMs). These developments are widely viewed as an important step in developing greater realism in predictions of future ecosystem states and fluxes. Increased realism, however, leads to increased model complexity, with new features raising a suite of ecological questions that require empirical constraints. Here, we review the developments that permit the representation of plant demographics in ESMs, and identify issues raised by these developments that highlight important gaps in ecological understanding. These issues inevitably translate into uncertainty in model projections but also allow models to be applied to new processes and questions concerning the dynamics of real‐world ecosystems. We argue that stronger and more innovative connections to data, across the range of scales considered, are required to address these gaps in understanding. The development of first‐generation land surface models as a unifying framework for ecophysiological understanding stimulated much research into plant physiological traits and gas exchange. Constraining predictions at ecologically relevant spatial and temporal scales will require a similar investment of effort and intensified inter‐disciplinary communication.     

Coral population dynamics across consecutive mass mortality events

Annual coral mortality events due to increased atmospheric heat may occur regularly from the middle of the century and are considered apocalyptic for coral reefs. In the Arabian/Persian Gulf, this situation has already occurred and population dynamics of four widespread corals (Acropora downingi, Porites harrisoni, Dipsastrea pallida, Cyphastrea micropthalma) were examined across the first‐ever occurrence of four back‐to‐back mass mortality events (2009–2012). Mortality was driven by diseases in 2009, bleaching and subsequent diseases in 2010/2011/2012. 2009 reduced P. harrisoni cover and size, the other events increasingly reduced overall cover (2009: ?10%; 2010: ?20%; 2011: ?20%; 2012: ?15%) and affected all examined species. Regeneration was only observed after the first disturbance. P. harrisoni and A. downingi severely declined from 2010 due to bleaching and subsequent white syndromes, while D. pallida and P. daedalea declined from 2011 due to bleaching and black‐band disease. C. microphthalma cover was not affected. In all species, most large corals were lost while fission due to partial tissue mortality bolstered small size classes. This general shrinkage led to a decrease of coral cover and a dramatic reduction of fecundity. Transition matrices for disturbed and undisturbed conditions were evaluated as Life Table Response Experiment and showed that C. microphthalma changed the least in size‐class dynamics and fecundity, suggesting they were ‘winners’. In an ordered ‘degradation cascade’, impacts decreased from the most common to the least common species, leading to step‐wise removal of previously dominant species. A potentially permanent shift from high‐ to low‐coral cover with different coral community and size structure can be expected due to the demographic dynamics resultant from the disturbances. Similarities to degradation of other Caribbean and Pacific reefs are discussed. As comparable environmental conditions and mortality patterns must be expected worldwide, demographic collapse of many other coral populations may soon be widespread.     

How Ethical Ideologies Relate to Public Attitudes toward Animals: The Dutch Case

Ethical ideologies, which include dimensions of idealism and relativism, are often involved in the process of decision-making regarding operational and economic research. However, the study of the role of ethical ideologies concerning public attitudes toward animals has been largely neglected. The present study analyzed how ethical ideologies and their interaction with human demographics relate to public attitudes toward animals in the Netherlands. The Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) was used to assess respondents’ ethical ideologies and their relationship with attitudes toward animals, which were measured by the Animal Issue Scale (AIS) and the Animal Attitude Scale (AAS). The results demonstrated that respondents’ gender and age were both significantly associated with attitudes toward animals, although gender showed a stronger correlation than age. Absolutists and situationists tended to show greater concern for animals than did exceptionists and subjectivists. Public attitudes toward animals were found to be significantly related to idealism; this confirms previous findings in the United States and China. Consistent with some previous findings in the United States, no significant correlation between relativism and public attitudes toward animals was found among Dutch respondents. However, this finding is inconsistent with findings in China indicating that relativism was negatively related to people’s attitudes toward animals. Our study indicates that the correlation between idealism and attitudes toward animals is the same in different countries, while the correlation between relativism and attitudes toward animals differs between developed and developing countries.     

Suburbs: dangers or drought refugia for freshwater turtle populations?

Urbanization is one of the most rapidly expanding forms of habitat alteration worldwide. Wildlife differs in their responses to urbanization depending upon species and site-specific factors. We used capture-mark-recapture to examine the abundance, population demographics, growth, and movements of the eastern long-necked turtle (Chelodina longicollis) in Australia over 1 year in a suburban environment and an adjacent nature reserve during drought. Contrary to expectations, sex ratios, injury incidence, and frequency of juvenile size classes did not differ between turtles in the suburbs and the nature reserve. Moreover, turtles in the suburbs were nearly 3 times more abundant, grew 5 times faster, and had populations comprised of more adults in the larger size classes than nature reserve populations. These findings, together with net movements from the nature reserves into the suburbs, suggest that suburban water bodies were the higher quality habitat, effectively buffering turtles from temporal fluctuations in environmental conditions during drought. However, reserve managers and urban planners need to recognize that suburban water bodies have the potential to attract turtles from nearby reserves during drought, and that even low levels of persistent mortality during these travels across reserve boundaries may have consequences for populations of long-lived vertebrates. © 2011 The Wildlife Society.     

Access to Music Education with Regard to Race in Two Urban Areas

This quantitative study examined access to school music instruction with regard to race in two urban areas: Detroit, Michigan, and Washington, DC, in 2009–2010. We found significant differences in the provision of music instruction between schools with high and low proportions of nonwhite enrollment, in categories including curricular offerings, extracurricular offerings, and resources. In the Detroit area, only 31 percent to 60 percent of schools with high percentages of nonwhite students offered any music instruction at all. We contrast our findings with those of a National Center for Educational Statistics report to demonstrate how regional and national averages can obscure information that should guide policy, such as the influence of location and racial demographics of schools on the provision of public school music instruction. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of using flawed data in the creation of policy and suggestions for more comprehensive and accurate data collection and analysis.     

Population Dynamics of Breeding Mallards in the Great Lakes States

Abstract: Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) populations in the United States portion of the Great Lakes region increased through the 1990s but have since declined. To promote sustainable growth of this population, managers need to understand how perturbation of vital rates will affect annual population growth rate (Λ). We developed a stage-based model representing the female mallard population in the Great Lakes using vital rates generated from a landscape-level study documenting reproductive parameters from 2001 to 2003. We conducted perturbation analyses (i.e., sensitivity analyses) to identify vital rates that most influence Λ and variance decomposition analyses to determine the proportion of variation in Λ explained by variation in each vital rate. Perturbation analyses indicated that Λ was most sensitive to changes in nonbreeding survival, duckling survival, and nest success. Therefore, changes in these vital rates would be expected to result in the greatest ΔΛ. Process variation in breeding season parameters accounted for 63% of variation in Λ. Breeding season parameters explaining the most variation were duckling survival (32%) and nest success (16%). Survival of adult females outside the breeding season accounted for 36% of variation in Λ. Harvest derivation, high harvest, and high sensitivity of Λ to nonbreeding survival for Great Lakes female mallards suggests there is a strong potential for managing the Great Lakes mallard population via harvest management. Because Λ was highly sensitive to changes in duckling survival, we suggest programs that emphasize wetland protection, enhancement, and restoration as a management strategy to improve population growth for breeding mallards.     

Demographics and parasites of African buffalo (Syncerus caffer Sparrman, 1779) in Ruaha National Park,Tanzania

The number of African buffaloes (Syncerus caffer Sparrman, 1779) inhabiting Ruaha National Park, Tanzania, is thought to be declining, but little data exist to determine whether the population is actually in decline. As an initial phase of collecting population data, we conducted demographic surveys, faecal egg counts and gastrointestinal parasite identification in Ruaha's buffalo herds in September 2011 and 2013. Most herds encountered in the two surveys appeared to be in good health, but with fewer calves in 2013 compared with 2011. The herd‐level body condition score was positively associated with the number of calves per 100 cows after adjusting for year, and the lower number of offspring in 2013 could possibly be associated with a below average rainfall in the 2012–2013 rainy season. Mean herd‐level egg counts ranged from 83 to 140 and from 28 to 113 eggs per g faeces in 2011 and 2013, respectively. Haemonchus, Nematodirus, Cooperia and Oesophagostomum spp., as well as coccidian oocysts, were detected in the population. Monitoring herd demographics and baseline health parameters over time will provide insight into population performance, increase the understanding of population stressors and contribute to buffalo conservation within Ruaha National Park and other protected areas of Africa.     

The Effects of Environmental Risk Factors on City Life Cycle: A Link Analysis

ABSTRACT

Due to rapid industrialization and urbanization, social economy develops in an unparalleled speed, while it certainly fosters the consumption of natural resources and the pressure to protect the ecological environment. Hence, there is a two-way relationship between the well-being of humans and the natural environment. In this study, link analysis techniques along with multivariate statistical analysis were employed to discover the effects of environmental risk factors on city life cycle, where suicides, immigration, and emigration were considered as the fundamental indicators of how cities evolve. Association rules, classification trees, MANOVA, and linear discriminant analysis were applied to data on air quality, socioeconomic development, and demographical factors belonging to the cities of Turkey. The results indicate that socioeconomic development levels of cities differ along attraction and life satisfaction dimensions. People tend to choose a city with better development level and better air quality in order to increase their life satisfaction. Additionally, developed cities are less likely to have issues with air quality and citizens who live in a poorly developed city are least satisfied with their lives.