Search results for " collection"
showing 10 items of 710 documents
The effects of data collection and observation methods on uncertainty of social networks in wild primates
2020
International audience; In social species, network centralities of group members shape social transmission and other social phenomena. Different factors have been found to influence the measurement of social networks, such as data collection and observation methods. In this study, we collected data on adults and juveniles and examined the effect of data collection method (ad libitum sampling vs. focal animal sampling) and observation method (interaction—grooming; play—vs. association—arm‐length; 2 m; 5 m proximities—) on social networks in wild vervet monkeys. First, we showed using a bootstrapping method, that uncertainty of ad libitum grooming and play matrices were lesser than uncertaint…
Synthetic cartography for mapping biodiversity in the Mediterranean region: Sicily as a case study
2018
This paper proposes a new hierarchical land classification system for the mapping of species distribution at national or regional scales. Our integrative framework incorporates two hierarchical levels inferred from historical, climatic, geomorphological and geological attributes. The feasibility of this proposal is based on the use of historical collections and literature data, as well as on its ability to combine old low-precision data with more recent records of higher resolution. The system is set up for vascular plants, but it can also be used for other taxonomic groups. Furthermore, it has the potential for application to the whole Mediterranean region because it is based on informatio…
Assessing cetacean surveys throughout the Mediterranean Sea: a gap analysis in environmental space
2018
Heterogeneous data collection in the marine environment has led to large gaps in our knowledge of marine species distributions. To fill these gaps, models calibrated on existing data may be used to predict species distributions in unsampled areas, given that available data are sufficiently representative. Our objective was to evaluate the feasibility of mapping cetacean densities across the entire Mediterranean Sea using models calibrated on available survey data and various environmental covariates. We aggregated 302,481 km of line transect survey effort conducted in the Mediterranean Sea within the past 20 years by many organisations. Survey coverage was highly heterogeneous geographicall…
Cetacean strandings and museum collections: A focus on Sicily island crossroads for mediterranean species
2021
The study examined the extent of the cetacean strandings in Italy, with a particular focus on Sicily Island. The paper aimed to contribute to the description of a pattern that contemplates the “regular and rare” cetacean species passage along the Sicilian coast. The estimate of marine cetacean strandings was extrapolated from the National Strandings Data Bank (BDS—Banca Dati Spiaggiamenti) and evaluated according to a subdivision in three coastal subregions: the Tyrrhenian sub-basin (northern Sicilian coast), the Ionian sub-basin (eastern Sicilian coast), and the Channel of Sicily (southern Sicilian coast). Along the Italian coast, more than 4880 stranding events have been counted in the pe…
Chasing phthalates in tissues of marine turtles from the Mediterranean sea
2018
Tissues from thirteen specimens of marine turtles, one Dermochelys coriacea and twelve Caretta caretta, found dead along the Sicilian coasts in 2016 were analyzed for the presence of phthalates. Four phthalates (DEP, DBP, BBP, and DEHP) were found at different significant concentrations in liver and gonads, while only DBP was found in muscle tissues and at a fourfold lower concentration than other phthalates in Dermochelys coriacea. No traces of DEP were detected in C. caretta tissues where DOTP was also revealed. The presence of phthalates in fat tissue in specimens of C. caretta showed a major prevalence of the most lipophilic phthalates DEHP and DOTP. The total concentration of all analy…
Castniidae of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Wrocław: new findings from Friedrich Wilhelm Niepelt's collection with comments on K…
2021
Further results of our research into the Giant Butterfly-Moths (Castniidae) of the Museum of Natural History (University of Wrocław) are presented. Castniids of the Niepelt collection had previously been reviewed. However, while curating other sections of the Lepidoptera collection, we discovered 18 misplaced specimens belonging to nine taxa of Castniidae, several of them bearing typical labels by Niepelt. Among them, two are of particular interest, insofar as they are associated with the world-class botanists August Weberbauer (1871–1948) and Karl Adolf Georg Lauterbach (1864–1937).
Atlas of Finnish bats
2019
This atlas is based on information in museum collections, literature, databases and unpublished data. In the last 150 years, the number of bat species in Finland increased from six to thirteen. Of these, five are common and regularly breeding (Eptesicus nilssonii, Myotis brandtii, Myotis daubentonii, Myotis mystacinus, Plecotus auritus), and eight rare (Eptesicus serotinus, Myotis dasycneme, Myotis nattereri, Nyctalus noctula, Pipistrellus nathusii, Pipistrellus pipistrellus, Pipistrellus pygmaeus, Vespertilio murinus), of which breeding of two (M. nattereri, P. nathusii) have been confirmed. The total number of records in the study is 11 234, of which 9717 are identified to species. The re…
Reducing the data-deficiency of threatened European habitats: Spatial variation of sabellariid worm reefs and associated fauna in the Sicily Channel,…
2017
Biogenic reefs, such as those produced by tube-dwelling polychaetes of the genus Sabellaria, are valuable marine habitats which are a focus of protection according to European legislation. The achievement of this goal is potentially hindered by the lack of essential empirical data, especially in the Mediterranean Sea. This study addresses some of the current knowledge gaps by quantifying and comparing multi-scale patterns of abundance and distribution of two habitat-forming species (Sabellaria alveolata and S. spinulosa) and their associated fauna along 190 km of coast on the Italian side of the Sicily Channel. While the abundance of the two sabellariids and the total number of associated t…
Fruit body based inventories in wood-inhabiting fungi: Should we replicate in space or time?
2016
We assessed the effect of survey design on the results when conducting fruit body surveys of wood-inhabiting fungi. Our results demonstrate that the optimal design depends on the ecological question to be addressed, as well as the group of fungal species under research. If the aim is to record the total species richness in a dead wood unit or to estimate the population size of a species, repeating the survey over time is generally necessary. However, if the aim is to estimate the total species richness in the forest or to assess how environmental covariates influence species richness or community composition, it is generally more efficient to increase the number of dead wood units than to r…
Inferring species interactions from ecological survey data: A mechanistic approach to predict quantitative food webs of seed feeding by carabid beetl…
2021
Abstract Ecological networks are valuable for ecosystem analysis but their use is often limited by a lack of data because many types of ecological interaction, for example, predation, are short‐lived and difficult to observe or detect. While there are different methods for inferring the presence of interactions, they have rarely been used to predict the interaction strengths that are required to construct weighted, or quantitative, ecological networks.Here, we develop a trait‐based approach suitable for inferring weighted networks, that is, with varying interaction strengths. We developed the method for seed‐feeding carabid ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) although the principles can …