Search results for "Life Below Water"
showing 10 items of 50 documents
Fire and Plant Diversification in Mediterranean-Climate Regions
2018
Despite decades of broad interest in global patterns of biodiversity, little attention has been given to understanding the remarkable levels of plant diversity present in the world’s five Mediterranean-type climate (MTC) regions, all of which are considered to be biodiversity hotspots. Comprising the Mediterranean Basin, California, central Chile, the Cape Region of South Africa, and southwestern Australia, these regions share the unusual climatic regime of mild wet winters and warm dry summers. Despite their small extent, covering only about 2.2% of world land area, these regions are home to approximately one-sixth of the world vascular plant flora. The onset of MTCs in the middle Miocene …
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…
Searching for a compromise between biological and economic demands to protect vulnerable habitats
2018
AbstractIdentifying vulnerable habitats is necessary to designing and prioritizing efficient marine protected areas (MPAs) to sustain the renewal of living marine resources. However, vulnerable habitats rarely become MPAs due to conflicting interests such as fishing. We propose a spatial framework to help researchers and managers determine optimal conservation areas in a multi-species fishery, while also considering the economic relevance these species may have in a given society, even in data poor situations. We first set different ecological criteria (i.e. species resilience, vulnerability and trophic level) to identify optimal areas for conservation and restoration efforts, which was bas…
Stable coexistence of genetically divergent Atlantic cod ecotypes at multiple spatial scales
2018
Abstract Coexistence in the same habitat of closely related yet genetically different populations is a phenomenon that challenges our understanding of local population structure and adaptation. Identifying the underlying mechanisms for such coexistence can yield new insight into adaptive evolution, diversification and the potential for organisms to adapt and persist in response to a changing environment. Recent studies have documented cryptic, sympatric populations of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in coastal areas. We analysed genetic origin of 6,483 individual cod sampled annually over 14 years from 125 locations along the Norwegian Skagerrak coast and document stable coexistence of two gene…
Environmental radiation alters the gut microbiome of the bank vole Myodes glareolus.
2018
International audience; Gut microbiota composition depends on many factors, although the impact of environmental pollution is largely unknown. We used amplicon sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes to quantify whether anthropogenic radionuclides at Chernobyl (Ukraine) impact the gut microbiome of the bank vole Myodes glareolus. Exposure to elevated levels of environmental radionuclides had no detectable effect on the gut community richness but was associated with an almost twofold increase in the Firmicutes:Bacteroidetes ratio. Animals inhabiting uncontaminated areas had remarkably similar gut communities irrespective of their proximity to the nuclear power plant. Hence, samples could be c…
Maristem stem cells of marine/aquatic invertebrates: from basic research to innovative applications
2018
The “stem cells” discipline represents one of the most dynamic areas in biomedicine. While adult marine/aquatic invertebrate stem cell (MISC) biology is of prime research and medical interest, studies on stem cells from organisms outside the classical vertebrate (e.g., human, mouse, and zebrafish) and invertebrate (e.g., Drosophila, Caenorhabditis) models have not been pursued vigorously. Marine/aquatic invertebrates constitute the largest biodiversity and the widest phylogenetic radiation on Earth, from morphologically simple organisms (e.g., sponges, cnidarians), to the more complex mollusks, crustaceans, echinoderms, and protochordates. These organisms contain a kaleidoscope of MISC-type…
Carbon isotope stratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, and 40Ar/39Ar age of the Cretaceous South Atlantic coast, Namibe Basin, Angola
2014
This publication results from Projecto PaleoAngola, an international cooperative research effort among the contributing authors and their institutions, funded by the National Geographic Society, the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society, Sonangol E.P., Esso Angola, Fundacao Vida of Angola, LS Films, Maersk, Damco, Safmarine, ISEM at SMU, The Royal Dutch Embassy in Luanda, TAP Airlines, Royal Dutch Airlines, The Saurus Institute, and the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. JS was additionally funded by Yale University and the Alfred Kordelin Foundation. We dedicate this contribution to the late Kalunga Lima, our friend and colleague in Projecto PaleoAngola. We thank Margar…
The lacustrine sediment record of Oberwinkler Maar (Eifel, Germany): Chironomid and macro-remain-based inferences of environmental changes during Oxy…
2008
The lacustrine record of Oberwinkler Maar (Eifel, Germany) is the northernmost continuous record documenting the Weichselian Pleniglacial in central Europe - a period characterized by multiple abrupt climate oscillations known as the Dansgaard/Oeschger cycles. Here, the results of a high-resolution study of chironomid remains are presented, with a focus on the earlier part of Oxygen Isotope Stage (OIS) 3 (60-50 kyr BP) covering four stadial/interstadial cycles. During the stadials, the chironomid fauna of the former lake was dominated by many coldstenothermic chironomid taxa, indicating a cold, oligotrophic lake. The concentrations of chironomid remains were lower during the interstadials, …
Quantifying biogeochemical heterogeneity in soil systems
2018
© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Soils are increasingly perceived as complex systems with properties and biogeochemical functions that vary on millimeter scales. Quantitative information about the resulting biogeochemical heterogeneity is needed to improve process knowledge and to render biogeochemical models more mechanistic. Here we demonstrate how standardized arrays of Pt-electrodes can be used to quantify biogeochemical or ‘functional’ soil heterogeneity, defined as the extent to which the soil is subdivided into microenvironments. Our case study confirmed the validity of this approach for a soil sequence consisting of a well-drained, a moderately well drained and a poorly drained Mollisol. We fou…
The emergence of Vibrio pathogens in Europe : ecology, evolution, and pathogenesis (Paris, 11-12th March 2015)
2015
Global change has caused a worldwide increase in reports of Vibrio-associated diseases with ecosystem-wide impacts on humans and marine animals. In Europe, higher prevalence of human infections followed regional climatic trends with outbreaks occurring during episodes of unusually warm weather. Similar patterns were also observed in Vibrio-associated diseases affecting marine organisms such as fish, bivalves and corals. Basic knowledge is still lacking on the ecology and evolutionary biology of these bacteria as well as on their virulence mechanisms. Current limitations in experimental systems to study infection and the lack of diagnostic tools still prevent a better understanding of Vibrio…