Search results for "Ecological Modeling"

A Participatory Agrobiodiversity Conservation Approach in the Oases: Community Actions for the Promotion of Sustainable Development in Fragile Areas

2021

Rural development policies today include significant directions towards ecological transition and sustainability. Biodiversity plays a fundamental role, especially in fragile environments. The North African oases, for example, are socio-ecological structures with delicate balances in terms of natural resources, where the activation of participatory conservation approaches appears today to be very useful, aiming at long-lasting results. This type of approach was applied in the oasis of El Hamma, in Tunisia. The socio-ecological analysis was carried out through semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders of the oasis. The results were used to activate focus groups and to identify, …

Stochastic models for phytoplankton dynamics in Mediterranean Sea

2016

Abstract In this paper, we review some results obtained from three one-dimensional stochastic models, which were used to analyze picophytoplankton dynamics in two sites of the Mediterranean Sea. Firstly, we present a stochastic advection–reaction–diffusion model to describe the vertical spatial distribution of picoeukaryotes in a site of the Sicily Channel. The second model, which is an extended version of the first one, is used to obtain the vertical stationary profiles of two groups of picophytoplankton, i.e. Pelagophytes and Prochlorococcus, in the same marine site as in the previous case. Here, we include intraspecific competition of picophytoplanktonic groups for limiting factors, i.e.…

Managing boreal forests for the simultaneous production of collectable goods and timber revenues

2016

Timber Production is an economically important provisioning ecosystem service in forests, but is often in conflict with the provision of other ecosystem services. In multifunctional forestry, the production of timber and non-timber ecosystem services should coexist in the same landscape. To this end, we explored the capacity of a boreal landscape to simultaneously produce collectable goods − bilberry (Vaccimium myrtillus L.), cowberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L.) and cep (Boletus edulis Bull.) − alongside timber revenues. We also identified optimal forest management plans to achieve this. Furthermore, we analyzed trade-offs between collectable good yields and timber production, as well as bet…

Using latent variable models to identify large networks of species‐to‐species associations at different spatial scales

2015

Summary We present a hierarchical latent variable model that partitions variation in species occurrences and co-occurrences simultaneously at multiple spatial scales. We illustrate how the parameterized model can be used to predict the occurrences of a species by using as predictors not only the environmental covariates, but also the occurrences of all other species, at all spatial scales. We leverage recent progress in Bayesian latent variable models to implement a computationally effective algorithm that enables one to consider large communities and extensive sampling schemes. We exemplify the framework with a community of 98 fungal species sampled in c. 22 500 dead wood units in 230 plot…

paco: implementing Procrustean Approach to Cophylogeny in R

2017

Summary The concordance of evolutionary histories and extant species interactions provides a useful metric for addressing questions of how the structure of ecological communities is influenced by macro-evolutionary processes. We introduce paco (v0.3.1), an R package to perform Procrustean Approach to Cophylogeny. This method assesses the phylogenetic congruence, or evolutionary dependence, of two groups of interacting species using both ecological interaction networks and their phylogenetic history. We demonstrate the functionality of paco through its application to empirical host-parasite and plant-pollinator communities. Although the package is intended to assess the phylogenetic congruen…

Impact of gas emboli and hyperbaric treatment on respiratory function of loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta)

2018

We investigated lung function in bycaught sea turtles with and without gas emboli. Hyperbaric O2 treatment significantly improves lung function. Pulmonary function testing may be a useful diagnostic tool to assess fisheries induced trauma.

Detailed information on fruiting phenology provides new insights on wood-inhabiting fungal detection

2017

Abstract Fruiting phenology traits may have a large effect on the detection of fungal species. Detailed studies considering these biologically important traits are, however, surprisingly scarce. We conducted a rigorous fruit body monitoring of wood-inhabiting fungal occurrences over one fruiting season. Taxon-specific longevity of the fruiting was different between different morphological groups. This was mainly due to agaric fruiting being shorter than other groups. Different number and timing of surveys are needed to detect the majority of the fruiting taxa of different wood-inhabiting fungal groups.

2022

Abstract 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 many theoretical frameworks. …

Blackgrass (Alopecurus myosuroides Huds.) seed dispersal from a single plant and its consequences on weed infestation

2001

Blackgrass (Alopecurus myosuroides Huds.) seed dispersal from single mother-plants was studied in two experiments. For the first experiment, eight blackgrass plants of different heights and number of ears were produced in a greenhouse with the help of different in sowing densities and nitrogen nutrition levels. At the beginning of seed shedding, the plants were placed outside, and seeds were gathered daily. Daily seed dispersal was analysed by fitting a Weibull equation to the number of seeds as a function of distance to the mother-plant. The second experiment was carried out in a field comprising winter barley and spring barley plots as well as bare soil. In each of these three parts, two …

The effects of drainage and restoration of pine mires on habitat structure, vegetation and ants

2016

Habitat loss and degradation are the main threats to biodiversity worldwide. For example, nearly 80% of peatlands in southern Finland have been drained. There is thus a need to safeguard the remaining pristine mires and to restore degraded ones. Ants play a pivotal role in many ecosystems and like many keystone plant species, shape ecosystem conditions for other biota. The effects of mire restoration and subsequent vegetation succession on ants, however, are poorly understood. We inventoried tree stands, vegetation, water-table level, and ants (with pitfall traps) in nine mires in southern Finland to explore differences in habitats, vegetation and ant assemblages among pristine, drained (30…