Search results for "Diversity."
showing 10 items of 3811 documents
New conservation viewpoints when plants are viewed at one level higher. Integration of phylogeographic structure, niche modeling and genetic diversit…
2019
Protection and management of closely related endangered species and subspecies at a very narrow regional scale is the origin of multiple dysfunctional conservation decisions. These include artificially increased IUCN risk assessment categories and derived consequences: poor effectiveness in allocating public and private funds or repeat of unnecessary actions/facilities. Data provided by the revisited study of a group of W Mediterranean larkspurs (Delphinium ser. Fissa), including new data on demography, niche modeling, genetic diversity and phylogeography, contributed to a new and wider analysis of causes of threat. Although current IUCN Red List regulations did not allow for assessments at…
Shrines in Central Italy conserve plant diversity and large trees
2015
Sacred natural sites (SNS) are instances of biocultural landscapes protected for spiritual motives. These sites frequently host important biological values in areas of Asia and Africa, where traditional resource management is still upheld by local communities. In contrast, the biodiversity value of SNS has hardly been quantitatively tested in Western contexts, where customs and traditions have relatively lost importance due to modernization and secularization. To assess whether SNS in Western contexts retain value for biodiversity, we studied plant species composition at 30 SNS in Central Italy and compared them with a paired set of similar but not sacred reference sites. We demonstrate tha…
Natural forest remnants as refugia for bryophyte diversity in a transformed mountain river valley landscape
2018
Riparian forests are among the most threatened ecosystem types worldwide. Their exploitation and replacement by coniferous plantations affects species pools and contributes to loss of biodiversity. We aimed to investigate bryophyte species pools within different habitat types in a transformed mountain river valley. We especially focused on the contribution of habitat types (relative to their proportional cover) to the species pool of the whole area. The study was conducted along the Czerwona Woda river - a model stream in the Stołowe Mountains National Park (SW Poland, study area: 91.2 ha) - and an example of coniferous plantations replacing natural broadleaved forest vegetation. Our study …
How to reconcile wood production and biodiversity conservation? The Pan-European boreal forest history gradient as an "experiment".
2018
There are currently competing demands on Europe's forests and the finite resources and services that they can offer. Forestry intensification that aims at mitigating climate change and biodiversity conservation is one example. Whether or not these two objectives compete can be evaluated by comparative studies of forest landscapes with different histories. We test the hypothesis that indicators of wood production and biodiversity conservation are inversely related in a gradient of long to short forestry intensification histories. Forest management data containing stand age, volume and tree species were used to model the opportunity for wood production and biodiversity conservation in five no…
Large-scale distribution analysis of Antarctic echinoids using ecological niche modelling.
2012
Understanding the factors that determine the distribution of taxa at various spatial scales is a crucial challenge in the context of global climate change. This holds particularly true for polar marine biota that are composed of both highly adapted and vulnerable faunas. We analysed the distribution of 2 Antarctic echinoid species, Sterechinus antarcticus and S. neumayeri, at the scale of the entire Southern Ocean using 2 niche modelling procedures. The performance of distribution models was tested with regard to the known ecology of the species. The respective contributions of environmental parameters are discussed along with the putative roles played by biotic interactions and biogeograph…
Challenges of ecological restoration: Lessons from forests in northern Europe
2013
The alarming rate of ecosystem degradation has raised the need for ecological restoration throughout different biomes and continents. North European forests may appear as one of the least vulnerable ecosystems from a global perspective, since forest cover is not rapidly decreasing and many ecosystem services remain at high level. However, extensive areas of northern forests are heavily exploited and have lost a major part of their biodiversity value. There is a strong requirement to restore these areas towards a more natural condition in order to meet the targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Several northern countries are now taking up this challenge by restoring forest biodiv…
Conceptual and operational perspectives on ecosystem restoration options in the European Union and elsewhere
2015
Summary Egoh et al. (2014) prioritized areas for ecological restoration in the European Union (EU) so that Europe could cost-efficiently meet the globally agreed 15% restoration target. We identify three major deficiencies in their analysis, one conceptual and two operational, which compromise the conclusions of the prioritization. The conceptual flaw is neglect of both the magnitude of degradation and the magnitude of improvement of the ecosystem condition expected due to restoration. The first operational flaw is inclusion of inappropriately measured restoration costs into the analyses. The second is use of spatial units that are so large (10 × 10 km) that only a fraction of each unit cou…
Impacts of agricultural intensification on bird communities: New insights from a multi-level and multi-facet approach of biodiversity
2016
International audience; Following the multiplicity of studies dealing with the effects of agricultural intensification on bird diversity, one of the lessons drawn is that these effects depend on both the taxonomic group, the component of diversity, the aspect of intensification, and the spatial scale. This often leads to disparate results among studies suggesting that the investigation of agriculture-biodiversity relationships suffers from scale-dependence, information redundancy, non-linearity problems, and thus, unpredictability.Here, we propose a multi-scale and multi-facet approach to clarify the impacts of agricultural intensification on biodiversity and possible mitigating actions. Ou…
Ethnobotany of the Aegadian Islands: safeguarding biocultural refugia in the Mediterranean
2021
Abstract Background The Aegadian Islands are located west of Trapani, Sicily. Once the site of bountiful tuna fisheries and fruit orchards (plums, peaches, apricots), grapevines, prickly pears, and grains, the local economy is now based on tourism, and many traditional agricultural and maritime practices have been abandoned. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the state of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) concerning the use of wild and cultivated plants and fungi for human health, food, maritime, and agricultural purposes on the islands of Levanzo, Favignana, and Marettimo and compare present-day practices with those documented in the past. Methods In-depth semi-structured interviews …
Taxonomic review of the plant bug genera Amapacylapus and Cylapus with descriptions of two new species and a key to the genera of Cylapini (Hemiptera…
2017
The plant bug tribe Cylapini (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Miridae: Cylapinae) is diagnosed and a worldwide key to the genera of the tribe is provided. The taxonomic review of the New World Cylapini genera Amapacylapus Carvalho & Fontes,1968 and Cylapus Say, 1832 is provided, including a key to species, diagnoses and redescriptions of genera and most included species, and descriptions of two new species, Amapacylapus unicolor sp. nov. (Ecuador) and Cylapus luridus sp. nov. (Brazil). Illustrations of the male genitalia, color photographs of the adult and scanning electron micrographs of the selected species are provided. The genus Cylapocerus Carvalho & Fontes, 1968 syn. nov. is proposed …