Search results for "Landscape"
showing 10 items of 1561 documents
Decomposition analysis of bioresources: Implementing a competitive and sustainable bioeconomy strategy in the Baltic Sea Region
2021
Bioeconomy development has become one of the new trends in policy design and research. This study looks at biotic resource extraction in the Baltic Sea region countries providing detailed country by country analyses of factors affecting changes in resource extraction. The study is based on the index decomposition analysis including factors related to bioeconomy strategies such as the population, share of people employed in bioeconomy, labour intensity, biotic resource extraction productivity, share of bioeconomy, export intensity, and share of bioresource export. The main factors increasing biotic resource extraction were the growth in labour material intensity, biotic extraction productivi…
Reproductive biology and conservation implications of three endangered snapdragon species (Antirrhinum, Plantaginaceae)
2009
About 32% of Antirrhinum species are considered to be endangered; however, no field studies have focused on their reproductive biology. In this work, several aspects of the reproductive biology (flowering phenology, floral biology, breeding system) and potential limits on seed quantity and quality (pollen limitation, inbreeding depression) were studied in natural populations of three endangered species of the genus (Antirrhinum charidemi, Antirrhinum subbaeticum, Antirrhinum valentinum). Results disclose that all three species need insect visitors for seed production since fruit set after autonomous self-pollination was lower than under hand cross-pollination. A. charidemi and A. valentinum…
Foraging site fidelity shapes the spatial organisation of a population of female western barbastelle bats
2009
Abstract Information about the spatial distribution of individual foraging habitats, which determines the space required by a population to be viable, is vitally important for the conservation of bats. Detailed knowledge of this kind is crucial for the design of nature reserves and management plans. Recent field studies that examined habitat use and home range distribution of bats largely ignored factors like traditional range use vs. intra- and interspecific competition, which may be responsible for the spatial organisation of a population home range. We investigated the home range sizes and distribution of a maternity colony of the western barbastelle bat via radio telemetry in four conse…
Population trends of birds across the iron curtain: Brain matters
2011
One approach to assess human impact on species’ population dynamics is to correlate ecological traits of species with their long-term population trends. Yet, few studies investigated population trends in multiple regions that differ in human impact to reveal which traits explain population trends over larger geographic areas and which only regionally. We examined the relationship between various species traits and long-term population trends of 57 common passerine bird species from 1991 to 2007 in three adjacent regions in central Europe that experienced differences in socioeconomic history: North-Western Germany, Eastern Germany and the Czech Republic. We tested effects of habitat, dietary…
Food for flight: pre-migratory dynamics of the Lesser Kestrel Falco naumanni.
2014
Capsule The post-reproductive stage of Lesser Kestrel is crucial for migratory fuelling and survival. Aims To describe the summer pre-migratory ecology of the Lesser Kestrel in Sicily and review existing data in Southern Europe. Methods We identified the main summer roosts and then made roost counts every ten days from 2010 to 2012. We used case-sensitive modelling procedures to detect biases in counts (generalized linear mixed models), assess the annual population trends from 2005 to 2012 (TRends and Indices for Monitoring); and to model habitat preferences (generalized linear model). We sampled pellets to describe the birds’ diet during the peak month prior to migration. Results We discov…
Context-dependent foraging habitat selection in a farmland raptor along an agricultural intensification gradient
2021
Abstract Gradients of agricultural intensification in agroecosystems may determine uneven resource availability for predators relying on these man-made habitats. In turn, these variations in resource availability may affect predators’ habitat selection patterns, resulting in context-dependent habitat selection. We assessed the effects of gradients of landscape composition and configuration on habitat selection of a colonial farmland bird of prey, the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni), relying on 76 GPS-tracked nestling-rearing individuals from 10 populations scattered along an agricultural intensification gradient. Analyses were conducted considering two ecological levels of aggregation (the …
Variation in egg size and offspring phenotype among and within seven Arctic charr morphs.
2022
Maternal effects have the potential to alter early developmental processes of offspring and contribute to adaptive diversification. Egg size is a major contributor to offspring phenotype, which can influence developmental trajectories and potential resource use. However, to what extent intraspecific variation in egg size facilitates evolution of resource polymorphism is poorly understood. We studied multiple resource morphs of Icelandic Arctic charr, ranging from an anadromous morph—with a phenotype similar to the proposed ancestral phenotype—to sympatric morphs that vary in their degree of phenotypic divergence from the ancestral anadromous morph. We characterized variation in egg size and…
Effect of Land-Use Change on the Changes in Human Lyme Risk in the United States
2022
The spatial extent and incidence of Lyme disease is increasing in the United States, particularly in the Upper Midwest and Northeast. Many previous studies have explored the drivers of its spatial pattern, however, few studies tried to explore the drivers for the changes of Lyme disease. We here compared the spatial patterns of changes of human Lyme cases and incidence in the Northeast and Upper Midwest between 2003–2005 and 2015–2017, and applied two different approaches (i.e., a statistical regularization approach and model averaging) to investigate the climatic and landscape factors affecting the risk change between the two periods. Our results suggested that changes in land-use variable…
Landscape management and economic evaluation of the ecosystem services of the vineyards
2021
<abstract> <p>The contribution aims to highlight the relationship between the business economy applied to viticulture and the ecosystem. The concepts of ecosystem services and viticultural biodiversity are seen in order to provide a new perspective for the development of a more sustainable business management. The work contributes to enriching the economic literature by introducing the relationship between ecosystem and business. The new perspective helps to place the company within the wider ecological-social system, favoring a more consistent interpretation of the relationship of exchange (impact and dependence) of resources with nature. The work proposes a methodology for cal…