Combined effects of global change pressures on animal-mediated pollination

Pollination is an essential process in the sexual reproduction of seed plants and a key ecosystem service to human welfare. Animal pollinators decline as a consequence of five major global change pressures: climate change, landscape alteration, agricultural intensification, non-native species, and spread of pathogens. These pressures, which differ in their biotic or abiotic nature and their spatiotemporal scales, can interact in nonadditive ways (synergistically or antagonistically), but are rarely considered together in studies of pollinator and/or pollination decline. Management actions aimed at buffering the impacts of a particular pressure could thereby prove ineffective if another pressure is present. Here, we focus on empirical evidence of the combined effects of global change pressures on pollination, highlighting gaps in current knowledge and future research needs.

“Pussy cat, pussy cat where have you been..?” Evaluating the use of stable isotopes, radiogenic isotopes and trace elements for investigating the ecology of Panthera leo

1. Understanding the behaviour and ecology of large carnivores is becoming increasingly important as the list of endangered species grows, with felids such as Panthera leo in some locations heading dangerously close to extinction in the wild. In order to have more reliable and effective tools to understand animal behaviour, movement and diet, we need to develop novel, integrated approaches and effective techniques to capture a detailed profile of animal foraging and movement patterns. 2. Ecological studies have shown considerable interest in using stable isotope methods, both to investigate the nature of animal feeding habits, and to map their geographical location. However, recent work has suggested that stable isotope analyses of felid fur and bone is very complex and does not correlate directly with the isotopic composition of precipitation (and hence geographical location). 3. We present new data that suggest these previous findings may be atypical, and demonstrate that isotope analyses of Felidae are suitable for both evaluating dietary inputs and establishing geo-location as they have strong environmental referents to both food and water. These data provide new evidence of an important methodology that can be applied to the family Felidae for future research in ecology, conservation, wildlife forensics and archaeological science.

Phylogenetic and evolutionary aspects of Paracoccidioides brasiliensis reveal a long coexistence with animal hosts that explain several biological features of the pathogen

The habitat of the mycelial saprobic form of Paracoccidio ides brasiliensis, which produces the infectious propagula, has not been determined and has proven difficult for mycologists to describe. The fungus has been rarely isolated from the environment, the disease has a prolonged latency period and no outbreaks have been reported. These facts have precluded the adoption of preventive measures to avoid infection. The confirmation of natural infections in nine-banded armadillos (Dasypus novemcinctus) with P. brasiliensis, in high frequency and wide geographic distribution, has opened new avenues for the study and understanding of its ecology. Armadillos belong to the order Xenarthra, which has existed in South America ever since the Paleocene Era (65 million years ago), when the South American subcontinent was still a detached land, before the consolidation of what is now known as the American continent. on the other hand, strong molecular evidence suggests that P. brasiliensis and other dimorphic pathogenic fungi - such as Blastomyces dermatitidis, Coccidioides immitis and Histoplasma capsulatum - belong to the family Onygenaceae sensu Into (order Onygenales, Ascomycota), which appeared around 150 million years ago.P. brasiliensis ecology and relation to its human host are probably linked to the fungal evolutionary past, especially its long coexistence with and adaptation to animal hosts other than Homo sapiens, of earlier origin. Instead of being a blind alley, the meaning of parasitism for dimorphic pathogenic fungi should be considered as an open two-way avenue, in which the fungus may return to the environment, therefore contributing to preserve its teleomorphic (sexual) and anamorphic (asexual) forms in a defined and protected natural habitat. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Feeding ecology of a selective folivore, the thin-spined porcupine (Chaetomys subspinosus) in the Atlantic forest

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

O uso da fauna cinegética e o consumo de proteína animal em comunidades rurais na Amazônia oriental: Reserva Extrativista Tapajós/Arapiuns Pará - Brasil

A caça e a pesca são exemplos clássicos de exploração de recursos naturais pelo homem, uma vez que estas atividades vêm sendo desenvolvidas desde a pré-história e, para algumas comunidades, continua sendo fonte de alimento tão importante quanto era para nossos antepassados. A pesca e outros produtos oriundos do extrativismo vegetal têm sido alvo constante de pesquisas para atender o mercado industrial, em detrimento dos estudos de etnoconservação. Em conseqüência desse desinteresse institucional e de outros fatores políticos intrínsecos, pouco se sabe sobre a biologia, a ecologia, a etologia e principalmente sobre a intensidade de exploração da fauna cinegética nos trópicos. Há uma grande lacuna sobre estudos que tratam da dieta de populações tradicionais na Amazônia, sobretudo aqueles que discorrem sobre a importância econômica e nutricional da atividade de caça e sua correlação com a conservação da vida silvestre. Este Estudo de Caso orientou-se para realizar a caracterização da fauna cinegética explorada por famílias extrativistas nas comunidades Aminã e Solimões na Reserva Extrativista do Tapajós/Arapiuns - PA, nas duas estações do ano (chuva e seca), além de revelar parâmetros nutricionais da atividade de caça na dieta protéica daquelas famílias. Os dados de abundância relativa (biomassa) para as espécies registrada nas duas comunidades estudadas mostram que Dasyprocta leporina (cutia) se revelou como a espécie mais pressionada. Quando comparados os Índice de Biomassa (IB) entre as fontes de proteínas animal e entre as comunidades estudadas, concluiu-se que a carne de caça, apesar de ser menos freqüente em termos de dias de consumo em relação ao pescado, as refeições realizadas com carne de caça são mais fartas do que as refeições realizadas com peixe. Além disso, com relação ao Índice de Proteína (IP), quando comparado entre fontes critérios e parâmetros para a implementação de projetos de manejo integrado de fauna em ocupações humanas.

Uma perspectiva fenomenológica para: o que é o animal no circo?

The relationship between humans and the world around is getting less symbiotic and harmonic, so as with the other animals we share the planet with, mostly about domination of plagues, domination for food, company, work or fun. This last both are responsible for the beginning of the Circus as we know, with the exhibition of wild animals and horses, and have been increased with clowns, acrobats, and jugglers, street artists, getting to be one unified show all around the world, which most of them don´t have animals. Following this tendency, the PL 7291/06 is on process on the plenary assembly to forbidden the animals inside Circus. In that matter, this work is a Phenomenological perspective of the phenomenon Circus’s animals sited beyond the animal rights activists perspective. The Ideographic and Nomotetic analysis of the activist’s speech realize that is no discordance between then. All the speeches agrees that the animal must be out of the circus, and most of them agrees about the cruelty involving the animal´s domination, about that ONGs should be the better destination for this animals, and they shows lack of knowledge about the Brazilian Circus, with or without animals, their traditions and characteristics, so as the lack of knowledge about de ecology and biology of the animals involved.

Resolving conflicts with Canada geese: an animal welfare perspective

The scope and significance of human conflicts with urban and suburban Canada goose populations has been growing rapidly since the mid 1980s. A lack of basic understanding about the biology and ecology of locally abundant goose populations has led, in part, to argument between opposing camps over the appropriate approaches and methodologies to resolve human-goose conflicts. Animal welfare interests have focused on the humaneness of roundup and slaughter programs, and advocated non-lethal approaches coupled with what they view as the more benign population control activity of egg addling. Some traditional wildlife managers have argued that non-lethal approaches have been tried and have failed, and that procedures such as addling do not work quickly or effectively. Differences have led to legal confrontations that absorb considerable energy and effort and may make cooperative involvement more difficult. This paper articulates some of the arguments that comprises the basis for the perspective of animal welfarists. It ends with a call for greater cooperation and involvement between all interests concerned with Canada geese.

Emerging contaminants in agricultural ecosystems: impact of selected pharmaceutical on water and soil ecology and pratical implications

Pharmaceuticals are useful tools to prevent and treat human and animal diseases. Following administration, a significant fraction of pharmaceuticals is excreted unaltered into faeces and urine and may enter the aquatic ecosystem and agricultural soil through irrigation with recycled water, constituting a significant source of emerging contaminants into the environment. Understanding major factors influencing their environmental fate is consequently needed to value the risk, reduce contamination, and set up bioremediation technologies. The antiviral drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir carboxylate, OC) has received recent attention due to the potential use as a first line defence against H5N1 and H1N1 influenza viruses. Research has shown that OC is not removed during conventional wastewater treatments, thus having the potential to enter surface water bodies. A series of laboratory experiments investigated the fate and the removal of OC in surface water systems in Italy and Japan and in a municipal wastewater treatment plant. A preliminary laboratory study investigated the persistence of the active antiviral drug in water samples from an irrigation canal in northern Italy (Canale Emiliano Romagnolo). After an initial rapid decrease, OC concentration slowly decreased during the remaining incubation period. Approximately 65% of the initial OC amount remained in water at the end of the 36-day incubation period. A negligible amount of OC was lost both from sterilized water and from sterilized water/sediment samples, suggesting a significant role of microbial degradation. Stimulating microbial processes by the addition of sediments resulted in reduced OC persistence. Presence of OC (1.5 μg mL-1) did not significantly affect the metabolic potential of the water microbial population, that was estimated by glyphosate and metolachlor mineralization. In contrast, OC caused an initial transient decrease in the size of the indigenous microbial population of water samples. A second laboratory study focused on basic processes governing the environmental fate of OC in surface water from two contrasting aquatic ecosystems of northern Italy, the River Po and the Venice Lagoon. Results of this study confirmed the potential of OC to persist in surface water. However, the addition of 5% of sediments resulted in rapid OC degradation. The estimated half-life of OC in water/sediment of the River Po was 15 days. After three weeks of incubation at 20 °C, more than 8% of 14C-OC evolved as 14CO2 from water/sediment samples of the River Po and Venice Lagoon. OC was moderately retained onto coarse sediments from the two sites. In water/sediment samples of the River Po and Venice Lagoon treated with 14C-OC, more than 30% of the 14C-residues remained water-extractable after three weeks of incubation. The low affinity of OC to sediments suggests that the presence of sediments would not reduce its bioavailability to microbial degradation. Another series of laboratory experiments investigated the fate and the removal of OC in two surface water ecosystems of Japan and in the municipal wastewater treatment plant of the city of Bologna, in Northern Italy. The persistence of OC in surface water ranged from non-detectable degradation to a half-life of 53 days. After 40 days, less than 3% of radiolabeled OC evolved as 14CO2. The presence of sediments (5%) led to a significant increase of OC degradation and of mineralization rates. A more intense mineralization was observed in samples of the wastewater treatment plant when applying a long incubation period (40 days). More precisely, 76% and 37% of the initial radioactivity applied as 14C-OC was recovered as 14CO2 from samples of the biological tank and effluent water, respectively. Two bacterial strains growing on OC as sole carbon source were isolated and used for its removal from synthetic medium and environmental samples, including surface water and wastewater. Inoculation of water and wastewater samples with the two OC-degrading strains showed that mineralization of OC was significantly higher in both inoculated water and wastewater, than in uninoculated controls. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and quantitative PCR analysis showed that OC would not affect the microbial population of surface water and wastewater. The capacity of the ligninolytic fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium to degrade a wide variety of environmentally persistent xenobiotics has been largely reported in literature. In a series of laboratory experiments, the efficiency of a formulation using P. chrysosporium was evaluated for the removal of selected pharmaceuticals from wastewater samples. Addition of the fungus to samples of the wastewater treatment plant of Bologna significantly increased (P < 0.05) the removal of OC and three antibiotics, erythromycin, sulfamethoxazole, and ciprofloxacin. Similar effects were also observed in effluent water. OC was the most persistent of the four pharmaceuticals. After 30 days of incubation, approximately two times more OC was removed in bioremediated samples than in controls. The highest removal efficiency of the formulation was observed with the antibiotic ciprofloxacin. The studies included environmental aspects of soil contamination with two emerging veterinary contaminants, such as doramectin and oxibendazole, wich are common parasitic treatments in cattle farms.

Ecology, sexual selection and speciation

The spectacular diversity in sexually selected traits among animal taxa has inspired the hypothesis that divergent sexual selection can drive speciation. Unfortunately, speciation biologists often consider sexual selection in isolation from natural selection, even though sexually selected traits evolve in an ecological context: both preferences and traits are often subject to natural selection. Conversely, while behavioural ecologists may address ecological effects on sexual communication, they rarely measure the consequences for population divergence. Herein, we review the empirical literature addressing the mechanisms by which natural selection and sexual selection can interact during speciation. We find that convincing evidence for any of these scenarios is thin. However, the available data strongly support various diversifying effects that emerge from interactions between sexual selection and environmental heterogeneity. We suggest that evaluating the evolutionary consequences of these effects requires a better integration of behavioural, ecological and evolutionary research.

Spatial Ecology of the Great Basin Rattlesnake on the Snake River Plain

Dr. Charles Peterson, Herpetologist and Professor of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University. Curator of Ichthyology and Herpetology at the Idaho Museum of Natural History.

Road Ecology: A Practitioner's Tale

Road Ecology is a relatively new sub-discipline of ecology that focuses on understanding the interactions between road systems and the natural environment. Wildlife crossings that allow animals to safely cross human-made barri-ers such as roads, are intended not only to reduce animal-vehicle collisions, but ideally to provide connectivity of habitat areas, combating habitat fragmentation. Wildlife mitigation strategies to improve the permeability of our infrastructure can include a combination of structures (overpasses/underpasses), at-grade crossings, fencing, animal-detection systems, and signage. One size does not fit all and solutions must be considered on a case-by-case ba-sis. Often, the feasibility of the preferred mitigation solution depends on a combination of variables including road geometrics, topography, traffic patterns, funding allocations, adjacent land use and landowner cooperation, the target wildlife species, their movement patterns, and habitat distribution. Joe and Deb will speak to the current road ecolo-gy practices in Montana and some real-world applications from the Department of Transportation.

Toward One Health: are public health stakeholders aware of the field of animal health?

Motivated by the perception that human and veterinary medicines can cooperate in more ways than just fighting zoonoses, the authors organized a roundtable during the 2013 annual meeting of the International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS). Collaborations between human and animal health sectors were reported to often rise in response to zoonotic outbreaks (during crisis time) and be mainly based on personal networks. Ways to maintain and strengthen these links were discussed.

Standardised animal models of host microbial mutualism.

An appreciation of the importance of interactions between microbes and multicellular organisms is currently driving research in biology and biomedicine. Many human diseases involve interactions between the host and the microbiota, so investigating the mechanisms involved is important for human health. Although microbial ecology measurements capture considerable diversity of the communities between individuals, this diversity is highly problematic for reproducible experimental animal models that seek to establish the mechanistic basis for interactions within the overall host-microbial superorganism. Conflicting experimental results may be explained away through unknown differences in the microbiota composition between vivaria or between the microenvironment of different isolated cages. In this position paper, we propose standardised criteria for stabilised and defined experimental animal microbiotas to generate reproducible models of human disease that are suitable for systematic experimentation and are reproducible across different institutions.