Search results for "Community"
showing 10 items of 2132 documents
Assessing disproportionate costs to achieve good ecological status of water bodies in a Mediterranean river basin.
2011
Water management is becoming increasingly important as the demand for water grows, diversifies, and includes more complex environmental concerns. The Water Framework Directive (WFD) seeks to achieve a good ecological status for all European Community water bodies by 2015. To achieve this objective, economic consideration of water management must be given to all decision-making processes. Exemption (time or level of stringency) from the objectives of the EU Directive can be justified by proving that the cost of implementing measures is disproportionate to the benefits. This paper addresses the issue of disproportionate costs through a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). To predict the costs, the fu…
Soil aggregate stability under different Mediterranean vegetation types
1998
The influence of vegetation type on soil erodibility was studied by means of aggregate stability measurements using the Modified Emerson Water Dispersion Test (MEWDT), water-drop impacts (CND and TDI) and Ultrasonic Disruption (UD) methods on soils from north-facing slopes of the mountain range of La Serra Grossa in the eastern Iberian Peninsula. Soils with similar characteristics but covered by the main plant species at the study area were selected. Quercus ilex woodland showed the most resistant soil aggregates followed by Q. coccifera and Pistacea lentiscus scrubland, Brachypodium retusum grassland and Pinus halepensis woodland. Aggregates developed beneath dwarf shrubs like Rosmarinus o…
Sengenyadance of theDigocommunity: Documentation of social context, music transcriptions and acoustic measurements of selected instruments
2015
ABSTRACTThis paper documents social and cultural aspects of Sengenya music which is practiced by Digo community (from the coast region in Kenya). Specifically the paper addresses (a) Background and Regional (Country) Context, (b) Social Context and Description of Sengenya Music, (c) Melodic transcriptions of Chivoti melodies, rhythmic transcriptions of the Six Drum Rhythms, and (d) Acoustic Measurement of selected chivoti Instruments and pitch registers of the drums used to accompany the dance. While there has been some documentation (Zake 1986, Darkwa 1991, Nyakiti 2007) of general social /cultural aspects of the Digo people (including other Coastal communities), scanty information exists …
Weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea) of the Stobrawski Landscape Park
2011
Weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea) of the Stobrawski Landscape ParkThe work presents the results of faunistic and ecological studies on the weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea without Scolytinae) of the Stobrawski Landscape Park. Between 2006-2008 more than 4 000 specimens representing 285 species of weevils were collected from nine types of plant communities.Mesotrichapion punctirostre, Nanophyes brevis, Otiorhynchus lepidopterus, Phytobius leucogaster, Rhaphitropis marchicuswere collected for the first time in Lower or Upper Silesia. The geographical, habitat and food preferences of particular species are presented. The relationships between weevil species and the different habitats are…
Wood-inhabiting fungal communities : Opportunities for integration of empirical and theoretical community ecology
2022
Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author The interest in studying wood-inhabiting fungal communities has grown in recent years. This interest has mainly been motivated by the important roles of wood-inhabiting fungi in ecosystem functioning (e.g. nutrient cycling) and conservation biology (e.g. their sensitivity to forest management). In this paper, I argue that another important, but yet largely unexplored motivation for studying wood-inhabiting fungal communities, is their potential to advance fundamental community ecology. One major advantage of wood-inhabiting fungi as model systems is that they are organized as spatially well-defined metacommunities, thus conforming to the assumptions of…
Zooplankton biodiversity and community structure vary along spatiotemporal environmental gradients in restored peridunal ponds
2015
<p>Zooplankton assemblages in neighboring ponds can show important spatial and temporal heterogeneity. Disentangling the influence of regional versus local factors, and of deterministic versus stochastic processes has been recently highlighted in the context of the metacommunity theory. In this study, we determined patterns of temporal and spatial variation in zooplankton diversity along one hydrological year in restored ponds of different hydroperiod and age. The following hypotheses regarding the assembling of species over time were tested: i) dispersal is not limited in our study system due to its small area and high exposure to dispersal vectors; ii) community dissimilarity among …
The long history of rich fens supports persistence of plant and snail habitat specialists
2021
Increasing evidence for the effects of Holocene history on modern biotic communities suggests that current explanations of community patterns and conservation strategies require revisiting. Here we focused on Central European rich fens that are at high risk among mire habitats because of their relatively low environmental stability, and hence sensitivity to successional shifts. At each of 57 study sites, inventory of specialist species of bryophytes, vascular plants and land snails, measurements of local environmental conditions, area, and radiocarbon dating were conducted. We used Moran’s I spatial autocorrelation, multiple linear regression models, MDS, db-RDA, and null models to identify…
The effects of habitat degradation on metacommunity structure of wood-inhabiting fungi in European beech forests
2013
Intensive forest management creates habitat degradation by reducing the variation of forest stands in general, and by removing old trees and dead wood in particular. Non-intervention forest reserves are commonly believed to be the most efficient tool to counteract the negative effects on biodiversity, but actual knowledge of the conservation efficiency is limited, especially for recent reserves. The structure of ecological communities is often described with measures of nestedness, beta diversity and similarity between communities. We studied whether these measures differ among forest reserves with different management histories. For this purpose, we used a large data set of wood-inhabiting…
Effects of environmental and spatial variables on lotic ostracod metacommunity structure in the Iberian Peninsula
2015
The heterogeneous distribution of aquatic species in lotic environments has been studied little in terms of metacommunity theory. Previous empirical tests have found significant spatial and environmental effects in pond and lake communities, but this has not yet been clearly established for stream networks. We conducted a multi-season survey of mountain streams in the Iberian Peninsula. We recorded GIS and in situ environmental data and collected biological samples to determine ostracods and macroinvertebrates and identified 41 ostracod species, the most common belonging to genera Herpetocypris , Sarscypridopsis , and Ilyocypris . A generalized linear model analysis showed that thermal rang…
Panton-Valentine leukocidin positive sequence type 80 methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carrying a staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec t…
2012
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a major antimicrobial drug-resistant pathogen causing serious infections. It was first detected in healthcare settings, but in recent years it has also become disseminated in the community. Children and young adults are most susceptible to infection by community-acquired (CA) MRSA strains. In this study 25 MRSA isolates implicated in infections of neonates and children admitted to an Algiers hospital during an 18 month period were characterized by molecular methods including staphylococcal cassette chromosome (SCC) mec typing, PCR amplification of pvl genes, pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). F…