Search results for "Nature Conservation"
showing 10 items of 105 documents
Editorial: Changing Plankton Communities: Causes, Effects and Consequences
2019
The Bioactive Compounds and Antioxidant Activity of Food Products of Rhizophora stylosa Fruit (Coffee and Tea Mangrove)
2018
The objective of this study is to investigate the bioactive compounds and antioxidant activity of coffee and tea mangrove (locally known in Indonesia) produced from the fruit of Rhizophora stylosa. Furthermore, three raw materials of coffee mangrove were also investigated to clarify their potencies. The crude extracts of five samples were subjected to antioxidant assay using DPPH. The results show that the extract of tea mangrove has the strongest activity; then, it was successfully fractionated using different polarity of solvents and yielded acetone and methanol fractions that had high antioxidant activity. The acetone fraction was purified and gave fractions A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, and A6, b…
The essentials of marine biotechnology
2021
Coastal countries have traditionally relied on the existing marine resources (e.g., fishing, food, transport, recreation, and tourism) as well as tried to support new economic endeavors (ocean energy, desalination for water supply, and seabed mining). Modern societies and lifestyle resulted in an increased demand for dietary diversity, better health and well-being, new biomedicines, natural cosmeceuticals, environmental conservation, and sustainable energy sources. These societal needs stimulated the interest of researchers on the diverse and underexplored marine environments as promising and sustainable sources of biomolecules and biomass, and they are addressed by the emerging field of ma…
Enrichment of Bacterioplankton Able to Utilize One-Carbon and Methylated Compounds in the Coastal Pacific Ocean
2018
International audience; Understanding the temporal variations and succession of bacterial communities involved in the turnover of one-carbon and methylated compounds is necessary to better predict bacterial impacts on the marine carbon cycle and air-sea carbon fluxes. The ability of the local bacterioplankton community to exploit one-carbon and methylated compounds as main source of bioavailable carbon during a productive and less productive period was assessed through enrichment experiments. Surface seawater was amended with methanol and trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), and bacterial abundance, production, oxygen consumption, as well as methanol turnover and growth rates of putative methylot…
The role of parasitism in adaptive radiations – when might parasites promote and when might they constrain ecological speciation?
2012
Research on speciation and adaptive radiation has flourished during the past decades, yet factors underlying initiation of reproductive isolation often remain unknown. Parasites represent important selective agents and have received renewed attention in speciation research. We review the literature on parasite-mediated divergent selection in context of ecological speciation and present empirical evidence for three nonexclusive mechanisms by which parasites might facilitate speciation: reduced viability or fecundity of immigrants and hybrids, assortative mating as a pleiotropic by-product of host adaptation, and ecologically-based sexual selection. We emphasise the lack of research on specia…
Biocultural diversity and naturalness of rural landscape in Sicily
2017
Rural landscapes are a relevant palimpsest of biocultural diversity, as a tangible example of the symbiosis between natural processes and human activities. Sicilian rural landscape, due to the history of the territory and the resulting social and economic context, are configured in a heterogeneous mosaic rich in residual naturalness, which enhance connectivity of ecological network and support a high diversity of species. The present-day natural traits and biological diversity of Sicilian environment are the legacy of the historical land uses, which has generated a variegated mosaic of rural landscapes. They play an important role in the conservation of endemic, rare and threatened plant sp…
La patrimonialización de la naturaleza. Génesis, transformaciones y estado actual
2014
En este artículo realizamos una aproximación general a la sociogénesis de la conservación moderna y pública de la naturaleza. Para ello distinguimos tres etapas . La primera estar á marca da por la búsqueda del anhelado paraíso perdido: a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX, el paisaje concentrará valores identitarios, patrióticos y nacionalistas . La segunda se caracteriza por la expansión de las áreas protegidas y la multiplicación de instituciones, agentes y figuras proteccionistas en el contexto de una crisis ambienta l creciente. Y la tercera, desplegada en las dos últimas décadas, viene definida por la entrada de un nuevo modelo de conservación participativa a la vez que se prod…
Challenging fear: chemical alarm signals are not causing morphology changes in crucian carp (Carassius carassius)
2010
Published version of an article in the journal: Environmental Biology of Fishes. Also available at SpringerLink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10641-010-9707-9 Crucian carp develops a deep body in the presence of chemical cues from predators, which makes the fish less vulnerable to gape-limited predators. The active components originate in conspecifics eaten by predators, and are found in the filtrate of homogenised conspecific skin. Chemical alarm signals, causing fright reactions, have been the suspected inducers of such morphological changes. We improved the extraction procedure of alarm signals by collecting the supernatant after centrifugation of skin homogenates. This removes the minute …
Relevant habitats neglected by the Directive 92/43 EEC: the contribution of Vegetation Science for their reappraisal in Sicily
2021
Field investigation carried out by the Sicilian botanists in the last 20 years enabled them to identify eight habitat types of high biogeographic and conservation interest, neglected by the Directive 92/43, which deservead hocconservation measures. For each of these habitats, a syntaxonomic interpretation of the corresponding plant communities, their main ecological, physiognomic and syndynamic traits and a list of diagnostic species are provided. Their classification into the macrotypes listed in the Annex I of the Directive 92/43 and the respective correspondence in EUNIS habitat classification are proposed. The habitats here described integrate those already proposed by the Italian Botan…
Merging science and arts to communicate nature conservation
2015
Abstract As a response to overall negative attitudes on nature conservation, Latvian scientists and artists launched a new initiative to communicate biodiversity. Unlike previous efforts, this initiative also included arts (poetry, music, dance and photo/video) as part of the information campaign. This project, named Nature Concert Hall, has been very successful between 2006 and 2012 in terms of receiving national and international recognition; this paper aimed to evaluate its efficiency in increasing the public’s knowledge and awareness of nature conservation issues and pro-environmental behaviour. We used an electronic web-form survey to investigate the views of the Nature Concert Hall’s …