Terrestrial carnivores and human food production: impact and management

1. The production of food for human consumption has led to an historical and global conflict with terrestrial carnivores, which in turn has resulted in the extinction or extirpation of many species, although some have benefited. At present, carnivores affect food production by: (i) killing human producers; killing and/or eating (ii) fish/shellfish; (iii) game/wildfowl; (iv) livestock; (v) damaging crops; (vi) transmitting diseases; and (vii) through trophic interactions with other species in agricultural landscapes. Conversely, carnivores can themselves be a source of dietary protein (bushmeat). 2. Globally, the major areas of conflict are predation on livestock and the transmission of rabies. At a broad scale, livestock predation is a customary problem where predators are present and has been quantified for a broad range of carnivore species, although the veracity of these estimates is equivocal. Typically, but not always, losses are small relative to the numbers held, but can be a significant proportion of total livestock mortality. Losses experienced by producers are often highly variable, indicating that factors such as husbandry practices and predator behaviour may significantly affect the relative vulnerability of properties in the wider landscape. Within livestock herds, juvenile animals are particularly vulnerable. 3. Proactive and reactive culling are widely practised as a means to limit predation on livestock and game. Historic changes in species' distributions and abundance illustrate that culling programmes can be very effective at reducing predator density, although such substantive impacts are generally considered undesirable for native predators. However, despite their prevalence, the effectiveness, efficiency and the benefit:cost ratio of culling programmes have been poorly studied. 4. A wide range of non-lethal methods to limit predation has been studied. However, many of these have their practical limitations and are unlikely to be widely applicable. 5. Lethal approaches are likely to dominate the management of terrestrial carnivores for the foreseeable future, but animal welfare considerations are increasingly likely to influence management strategies. The adoption of non-lethal approaches will depend upon proof of their effectiveness and the willingness of stakeholders to implement them, and, in some cases, appropriate licensing and legislation. 6. Overall, it is apparent that we still understand relatively little about the importance of factors affecting predation on livestock and how to manage this conflict effectively. We consider the following avenues of research to be essential: (i) quantified assessments of the loss of viable livestock; (ii) landscape-level studies of contiguous properties to quantify losses associated with variables such as different husbandry practices; (iii) replicated experimental manipulations to identify the relative benefit of particular management practices, incorporating (iv) techniques to identify individual predators killing stock; and (v) economic analyses of different management approaches to quantify optimal production strategies.

The impact of sarcoptic mange Sarcoptes scabiei on the British fox Vulpes vulpes population

1. Disease epizootics can significantly influence host population dynamics and the structure and functioning of ecological communities. Sarcoptic mange Sarcoptes scabiei has dramatically reduced red fox populations Vulpes vulpes in several countries, including Britain, although impacts on demographic processes are poorly understood. We review the literature on the impact of mange on red fox populations, assess its current distribution in Britain through a questionnaire survey and present new data on resultant demographic changes in foxes in Bristol, UK. 2. A mange epizootic in Sweden spread across the entire country in < 10 years resulting in a decline in fox density of up to 95%; density remained lowered for 15–20 years. In Spain, mange has been enzootic for > 75 years and is widely distributed; mange presence was negatively correlated with habitat quality. 3. Localized outbreaks have occurred sporadically in Britain during the last 100 years. The most recent large-scale outbreak arose in the 1990s, although mange has been present in south London and surrounding environs since the 1940s. The questionnaire survey indicated that mange was broadly distributed across Britain, but areas of perceived high prevalence (> 50% affected) were mainly in central and southern England. Habitat type did not significantly affect the presence/absence of mange or perceived prevalence rates. Subjective assessments suggested that populations take 15–20 years to recover. 4. Mange appeared in Bristol's foxes in 1994. During the epizootic phase (1994–95), mange spread through the city at a rate of 0.6–0.9 km/month, with a rise in infection in domestic dogs Canis familiaris c. 1–2 months later. Juvenile and adult fox mortality increased and the proportion of females that reproduced declined but litter size was unaffected. Population density declined by > 95%. 5. In the enzootic phase (1996–present), mange was the most significant mortality factor. Juvenile mortality was significantly higher than in the pre-mange period, and the number of juveniles classified as dispersers declined. Mange infection reduced the reproductive potential of males and females: females with advanced mange did not breed; severely infected males failed to undergo spermatogenesis. In 2004, Bristol fox population density was only 15% of that in 1994.

Making ecological science policy relevant: issues of scale and disciplinary integration

In this paper, we ask why so much ecological scientific research does not have a greater policy impact in the UK. We argue that there are two potentially important and related reasons for this failing. First, much current ecological science is not being conducted at a scale that is readily meaningful to policy-makers. Second, to make much of this research policy-relevant requires collaborative interdisciplinary research between ecologists and social scientists. However, the challenge of undertaking useful interdisciplinary research only re-emphasises the problems of scale: ecologists and social scientists traditionally frame their research questions at different scales and consider different facets of natural resource management, setting different objectives and using different language. We argue that if applied ecological research is to have greater impact in informing environmental policy, much greater attention needs to be given to the scale of the research efforts as well as to the interaction with social scientists. Such an approach requires an adjustment in existing research and funding infrastructures.

Phylogenomics of eukaryotes: Impact of missing data on large alignments

Resolving the relationships between Metazoa and other eukaryotic groups as well as between metazoan phyla is central to the understanding of the origin and evolution of animals. The current view is based on limited data sets, either a single gene with many species (e.g., ribosomal RNA) or many genes but with only a few species. Because a reliable phylogenetic inference simultaneously requires numerous genes and numerous species, we assembled a very large data set containing 129 orthologous proteins (similar to30,000 aligned amino acid positions) for 36 eukaryotic species. Included in the alignments are data from the choanoflagellate Monosiga ovata, obtained through the sequencing of about 1,000 cDNAs. We provide conclusive support for choanoflagellates as the closest relative of animals and for fungi as the second closest. The monophyly of Plantae and chromalveolates was recovered but without strong statistical support. Within animals, in contrast to the monophyly of Coelomata observed in several recent large-scale analyses, we recovered a paraphyletic Coelamata, with nematodes and platyhelminths nested within. To include a diverse sample of organisms, data from EST projects were used for several species, resulting in a large amount of missing data in our alignment (about 25%). By using different approaches, we verify that the inferred phylogeny is not sensitive to these missing data. Therefore, this large data set provides a reliable phylogenetic framework for studying eukaryotic and animal evolution and will be easily extendable when large amounts of sequence information become available from a broader taxonomic range.

Controlled trial of the short- and long-term effect of psychological treatment of post-partum depression - 1. Impact on maternal mood!

Background: Psychological interventions for postnatal depression can be beneficial in the short term but their longer-term impact is unknown, Aims To evaluate the long-term effect on maternal mood of three psychological treatments in relation to routine primary care. Method: Women with post-partum depression (n=193)were assigned randomly to one of four conditions: routine primary care, non-directive counselling, cognitive-behavioural therapy or psychodynamic therapy. They were assessed immediately after the treatment phase (at 4.5 months) and at 18 and 60 months post-partum. Results: Compared with the control, ail three treatments had a significant impact at 4.5 months on maternal mood (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, EPDS). Only psychodynamic therapy produced a rate of reduction in depression (Structured Clinical interview for DSM III-R) significantly superior to that of the control. The benefit of treatment was no longer apparent by 9 months postpartum, treatment did not reduce subsequent episodes of post-partum depression. Conclusions: Psychological intervention for post-partum depression improves maternal mood (EPDS) in the short term. However, this benefit is not superior to spontaneous remission in the long term.

Patients' understanding of risk associated with medication use: impact of European Commission guidelines and other risk scales

Patients want and need comprehensive and accurate information about their medicines so that they can participate in decisions about their healthcare: In particular, they require information about the likely risks and benefits that are associated with the different treatment options. However, to provide this information in a form that people can readily understand and use is a considerable challenge to healthcare professionals. One recent attempt to standardise the Language of risk has been to produce sets of verbal descriptors that correspond to specific probability ranges, such as those outlined in the European Commission (EC) Pharmaceutical Committee guidelines in 1998 for describing the incidence of adverse effects. This paper provides an overview of a number of studies involving members of the general public, patients, and hospital doctors, that evaluated the utility of the EC guideline descriptors (very common, common, uncommon, rare, very rare). In all studies it was found that people significantly over-estimated the likelihood of adverse effects occurring, given specific verbal descriptors. This in turn resulted in significantly higher ratings of their perceived risks to health and significantly lower ratings of their likelihood of taking the medicine. Such problems of interpretation are not restricted to the EC guideline descriptors. Similar levels of misinterpretation have also been demonstrated with two other recently advocated risk scales (Caiman's verbal descriptor scale and Barclay, Costigan and Davies' lottery scale). In conclusion, the challenge for risk communicators and for future research will be to produce a language of risk that is sufficiently flexible to take into account different perspectives, as well as changing circumstances and contexts of illness and its treatments. In the meantime, we urge the EC and other legislative bodies to stop recommending the use of specific verbal labels or phrases until there is a stronger evidence base to support their use.

The impact of traffic emissions on atmospheric ozone and OH: results from QUANTIFY

To estimate the impact of emissions by road, aircraft and ship traffic on ozone and OH in the present-day atmosphere six different atmospheric chemistry models have been used. Based on newly developed global emission inventories for road, ship and aircraft emission data sets each model performed sensitivity simulations reducing the emissions of each transport sector by 5%. The model results indicate that on global annual average lower tropospheric ozone responds most sensitive to ship emissions (50.6%±10.9% of the total traffic induced perturbation), followed by road (36.7%±9.3%) and aircraft exhausts (12.7%±2.9%), respectively. In the northern upper troposphere between 200–300 hPa at 30–60° N the maximum impact from road and ship are 93% and 73% of the maximum effect of aircraft, respectively. The latter is 0.185 ppbv for ozone (for the 5% case) or 3.69 ppbv when scaling to 100%. On the global average the impact of road even dominates in the UTLS-region. The sensitivity of ozone formation per NOx molecule emitted is highest for aircraft exhausts. The local maximum effect of the summed traffic emissions on the ozone column predicted by the models is 0.2 DU and occurs over the northern subtropical Atlantic extending to central Europe. Below 800 hPa both ozone and OH respond most sensitively to ship emissions in the marine lower troposphere over the Atlantic. Based on the 5% perturbation the effect on ozone can exceed 0.6% close to the marine surface (global zonal mean) which is 80% of the total traffic induced ozone perturbation. In the southern hemisphere ship emissions contribute relatively strongly to the total ozone perturbation by 60%–80% throughout the year. Methane lifetime changes against OH are affected strongest by ship emissions up to 0.21 (± 0.05)%, followed by road (0.08 (±0.01)%) and air traffic (0.05 (± 0.02)%). Based on the full scale ozone and methane perturbations positive radiative forcings were calculated for road emissions (7.3±6.2 mWm−2) and for aviation (2.9±2.3 mWm−2). Ship induced methane lifetime changes dominate over the ozone forcing and therefore lead to a net negative forcing (−25.5±13.2 mWm−2).

The impact of the state of the troposphere on the response to stratospheric heating in a simplified GCM

Previous studies have made use of simplified general circulation models (sGCMs) to investigate the atmospheric response to various forcings. In particular, several studies have investigated the tropospheric response to changes in stratospheric temperature. This is potentially relevant for many climate forcings. Here the impact of changing the tropospheric climatology on the modeled response to perturbations in stratospheric temperature is investigated by the introduction of topography into the model and altering the tropospheric jet structure. The results highlight the need for very long integrations so as to determine accurately the magnitude of response. It is found that introducing topography into the model and thus removing the zonally symmetric nature of the model’s boundary conditions reduces the magnitude of response to stratospheric heating. However, this reduction is of comparable size to the variability in the magnitude of response between different ensemble members of the same 5000-day experiment. Investigations into the impact of varying tropospheric jet structure reveal a trend with lower-latitude/narrower jets having a much larger magnitude response to stratospheric heating than higher-latitude/wider jets. The jet structures that respond more strongly to stratospheric heating also exhibit longer time scale variability in their control run simulations, consistent with the idea that a feedback between the eddies and the mean flow is both responsible for the persistence of the control run variability and important in producing the tropospheric response to stratospheric temperature perturbations.

Researcher development: the impact of undergraduate research opportunity programmes on students in the UK

Undergraduate research opportunity programmes (UROP) are common in North America where research has confirmed their benefits. These schemes are gaining ground in the UK, and this article provides evidence for how UK students are benefiting from the experience. Results suggest UROP makes a significant contribution to the research capabilities and confidence of participating students, boosting their understanding of both research and their own subjects. Whilst offering considerable benefits to student learning, there is no evidence that UROP schemes on their current small scale attract additional students to postgraduate research, since the majority that participate are already interested in postgraduate study. However, at an individual level, most students report increased confidence and appreciation of the realities of the research process, and desire to progress on to postgraduate study following the placement, indicating that schemes may have the potential to cultivate new research confidence and interest if expanded.

Forecast impact of targeted observations: sensitivity to observation error and proximity to steep orography

For a targeted observations case, the dependence of the size of the forecast impact on the targeted dropsonde observation error in the data assimilation is assessed. The targeted observations were made in the lee of Greenland; the dependence of the impact on the proximity of the observations to the Greenland coast is also investigated. Experiments were conducted using the Met Office Unified Model (MetUM), over a limited-area domain at 24-km grid spacing, with a four-dimensional variational data assimilation (4D-Var) scheme. Reducing the operational dropsonde observation errors by one-half increases the maximum forecast improvement from 5% to 7%–10%, measured in terms of total energy. However, the largest impact is seen by replacing two dropsondes on the Greenland coast with two farther from the steep orography; this increases the maximum forecast improvement from 5% to 18% for an 18-h forecast (using operational observation errors). Forecast degradation caused by two dropsonde observations on the Greenland coast is shown to arise from spreading of data by the background errors up the steep slope of Greenland. Removing boundary layer data from these dropsondes reduces the forecast degradation, but it is only a partial solution to this problem. Although only from one case study, these results suggest that observations positioned within a correlation length scale of steep orography may degrade the forecast through the anomalous upslope spreading of analysis increments along terrain-following model levels.

Ensemble prediction for nowcasting with a convection-permitting model—I: description of the system and the impact of radar-derived surface precipitation rates

A key strategy to improve the skill of quantitative predictions of precipitation, as well as hazardous weather such as severe thunderstorms and flash floods is to exploit the use of observations of convective activity (e.g. from radar). In this paper, a convection-permitting ensemble prediction system (EPS) aimed at addressing the problems of forecasting localized weather events with relatively short predictability time scale and based on a 1.5 km grid-length version of the Met Office Unified Model is presented. Particular attention is given to the impact of using predicted observations of radar-derived precipitation intensity in the ensemble transform Kalman filter (ETKF) used within the EPS. Our initial results based on the use of a 24-member ensemble of forecasts for two summer case studies show that the convective-scale EPS produces fairly reliable forecasts of temperature, horizontal winds and relative humidity at 1 h lead time, as evident from the inspection of rank histograms. On the other hand, the rank histograms seem also to show that the EPS generates too much spread for forecasts of (i) surface pressure and (ii) surface precipitation intensity. These may indicate that for (i) the value of surface pressure observation error standard deviation used to generate surface pressure rank histograms is too large and for (ii) may be the result of non-Gaussian precipitation observation errors. However, further investigations are needed to better understand these findings. Finally, the inclusion of predicted observations of precipitation from radar in the 24-member EPS considered in this paper does not seem to improve the 1-h lead time forecast skill.

Dependence of Indian monsoon rainfall on moisture fluxes across the Arabian Sea and the impact of coupled model sea surface temperature biases

The Arabian Sea is an important moisture source for Indian monsoon rainfall. The skill of climate models in simulating the monsoon and its variability varies widely, while Arabian Sea cold sea surface temperature (SST) biases are common in coupled models and may therefore influence the monsoon and its sensitivity to climate change. We examine the relationship between monsoon rainfall, moisture fluxes and Arabian Sea SST in observations and climate model simulations. Observational analysis shows strong monsoons depend on moisture fluxes across the Arabian Sea, however detecting consistent signals with contemporaneous summer SST anomalies is complicated in the observed system by air/sea coupling and large-scale induced variability such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation feeding back onto the monsoon through development of the Somali Jet. Comparison of HadGEM3 coupled and atmosphere-only configurations suggests coupled model cold SST biases significantly reduce monsoon rainfall. Idealised atmosphere-only experiments show that the weakened monsoon can be mainly attributed to systematic Arabian Sea cold SST biases during summer and their impact on the monsoon-moisture relationship. The impact of large cold SST biases on atmospheric moisture content over the Arabian Sea, and also the subsequent reduced latent heat release over India, dominates over any enhancement in the land-sea temperature gradient and results in changes to the mean state. We hypothesize that a cold base state will result in underestimation of the impact of larger projected Arabian Sea SST changes in future climate, suggesting that Arabian Sea biases should be a clear target for model development.

A prospective longitudinal study of the impact of early postnatal vs. chronic maternal depressive symptoms on child development

Background Few studies of the effects of postnatal depression on child development have considered the chronicity of depressive symptoms. We investigated whether early postnatal depressive symptoms (PNDS) predicted child developmental outcome independently of later maternal depressive symptoms. Methods In a prospective, longitudinal study, mothers and children were followed-up from birth to 2 years; repeated measures of PNDS were made using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS); child development was assessed using the Bayley Scales II. Multilevel modelling techniques were used to examine the association between 6 week PNDS, and child development, taking subsequent depressive symptoms into account. Results Children of mothers with 6 week PNDS were significantly more likely than children of non-symptomatic mothers to have poor cognitive outcome; however, this association was reduced to trend level when adjusted for later maternal depressive symptoms. Conclusion Effects of early PNDS on infant development may be partly explained by subsequent depressive symptoms.

Provider diversity in the NHS: impact on quality and innovation

The overall objective of the research project has been to assess the impact of provider diversity on quality and innovation in the NHS. The specific research aims were to identify the differences in performance between non-profit Third Sector organisations, for-profit private enterprises, and incumbent public sector institutions within the NHS as providers of health care services, as well as the factors that affect the entry and growth of new private and Third Sector providers. The study used both qualitative and quantitative methods based on case studies of four Local Health Economies (LHEs). Qualitative methods included documentary analysis and interviews with key informants and managers of both commissioning and provider organisations. To provide a focus to the study, two tracer conditions were followed: orthopaedic surgery and home health care for frail older people. In the case of hospital inpatient care, data on patient characteristics were also collected from the HES database. The analysis of this data provided preliminary estimates of the effects of provider type on quality, controlling for client characteristics and case mix. In addition, a survey of patient experience in diverse provider organisations was analysed to compare the different dimensions of quality of provision of acute services between incumbent NHS organisations and new independent sector treatment centres. The research has shown that, in respect of inpatient hospital services, diverse providers supply health services of at least as good quality as traditional NHS providers, and that there is ample opportunity to expand their scale and scope as providers of services commissioned by the NHS. The research used patient experience survey data to investigate whether hospital ownership affects the quality of services reported by NHS patients in areas other than clinical quality. The raw survey data appear to show that private hospitals provide higher quality services than the public hospitals. However, further empirical analysis leads to a more nuanced understanding of the performance differences. Firstly, the analysis shows that each sector offers greater quality in certain specialties. Secondly, the analysis shows that differences in the quality of patients’ reported experience are mainly attributable to patient characteristics, the selection of patients into each type of hospital, and the characteristics of individual hospitals, rather than to hospital ownership as such. Controlling for such differences, NHS patients are on average likely to experience a similar quality of care in a public or privately-run hospital. Nevertheless, for specific groups of patients and for specific types of treatments, especially the more straightforward ones, the private sector provides an improved patient experience compared to the public sector. Elsewhere, the NHS continues to provide a high quality service and outperforms the private sector in a range of services and for a range of clients.