Riverine flow and spawning requirements of Macquaria ambigua oriens: implications for conservation and management

Understanding the life-history attributes of aquatic species is integral to the development of environmental-flow strategies in regulated river systems. This is particularly important when species are under continual and increasing pressure from water-resource development. In this study, the water temperature and flow requirements for spawning of the Fitzroy River golden perch (Macquaria ambigua oriens) were investigated over 4 years at 22 sites in the Fitzroy River catchment. Eggs, larvae and young-of-year (YOY) M. ambigua oriens were sampled on a variety of flow events to determine the environmental requirements for spawning. Eggs and larvae of M. ambigua oriens were detected during natural flow events generally with a minimum of 1.5 m river rise and duration of 7 days. Spawning was associated with the peak and/or recession of the first or second post-winter flow event where water temperatures exceeded 248 degrees C. Our data suggests that it is important to protect a range of flows, not just flood flows, as previously documented for this species. The interaction of spawning flows with existing and future water-resource development should be considered to ensure maintenance of the population viability of M. ambigua oriens.

Correlación entre la personalidad y los factores de la Teoría del Comportamiento Planeado (TCP) en adolescentes escolarizados de 11-19 años del Caribe Colombiano

The increasing rate of pregnancies in teenagers and the high incident of the infections of sexual transmission (HIV/ AIDS, for example), these are health related issues (and especially the sexual and reproductive health), which have received great attention on the part of investigators and of the public opinion in general. Recently, there has been evidenced that teenagers carry out very easily risk sexual behaviors, and those who have not presented the above mentioned behaviors also show high levels of intention to carry out them. There is the hypothesis that besides cognitive variables such as attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and intention, the personality of the young persons is an aspect that plays an important paper in their sexual and reproductive health. Significant correlations were found between the variales of the TPB and the personality traits; the results suggest that the direction of these correlations is associated with the specific type of behavior or situation that is assessed. Keywords: personality, theory of planned behavior, adolescents, reproductive sexuality.

Crystal and molecular structure of a dimethyl sulphoxide complex with lanthanum nitrate, La(NO3)3.4(CH3)2SO

Abstract is not available.

Structural transitions in (La,Ln)2CuO4 and La2(Cu,Ni)O4 systems

Solid solutions of the formula La2−xLnxCuO4 (Ln = Pr, Nd) possess the orthorhombic structure of La2CuO4 for small values of x and transform to the tetragonal Nd2CuO4 structure at a critical value of x. At the critical composition, there is an abrupt change in specific volume as well as the Image ratio. The material exhibits temperature-independent electrical resistivity below the critical value x and semiconducting behaviour above it. The specific volume and Image ratio smoothly decrease with increase in x in the La2Cu1−xNixO4 system, although the solid solution possess the tetragonal K2NiF4 structure when x>0.1. Compositions with x>0.1 exhibit a gradual semiconductor metal transition similar to that of La2NiO4, the transition temperature decreasing with increasing

Genetic conservation of Phosphine Resistance in the Rice Weevil Sitophilus oryzae (L.)

High levels of resistance to phosphine in the rice weevil Sitophilus oryzae have been detected in Asian countries including China and Vietnam, however there is limited knowledge of the genetic mechanism of resistance in these strains. We find that the genetic basis of strong phosphine resistance is conserved between strains of S. oryzae from China, Vietnam and Australia. Each of four strongly resistant strains has an identical amino acid variant in the encoded dihydrolipoamide dehydrogenase (DLD) enzyme that was previously identified as a resistance factor in Rhyzopertha dominica and Tribolium castaneum. The unique amino acid substitution, Asparagine > Threonine (N505T) of all strongly resistant S. oryzae corresponds to the position of an Asparagine > Histidine variant (N506H) that was previously reported in strongly resistant R. dominica. Progeny (F16 and F18) from two independent crosses showed absolute linkage of N505T to the strong resistance phenotype, indicating that if N505T was not itself the resistance variant that it resided within 1 or 2 genes of the resistance factor. Non-complementation between the strains confirmed the shared genetic basis of strong resistance, which was supported by the very similar level of resistance between the strains, with LC50 values ranging from 0.20 to 0.36 mgL-1 for a 48 hour exposure at 25°C. Thus, the mechanism of high level resistance to phosphine is strongly conserved between R. dominica, T. castaneum and S. oryzae. A fitness cost associated with strongly resistant allele was observed in segregating populations in the absence of selection.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and artificial intelligence revolutionizing wildlife monitoring and conservation

Surveying threatened and invasive species to obtain accurate population estimates is an important but challenging task that requires a considerable investment in time and resources. Estimates using existing ground-based monitoring techniques, such as camera traps and surveys performed on foot, are known to be resource intensive, potentially inaccurate and imprecise, and difficult to validate. Recent developments in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), artificial intelligence and miniaturized thermal imaging systems represent a new opportunity for wildlife experts to inexpensively survey relatively large areas. The system presented in this paper includes thermal image acquisition as well as a video processing pipeline to perform object detection, classification and tracking of wildlife in forest or open areas. The system is tested on thermal video data from ground based and test flight footage, and is found to be able to detect all the target wildlife located in the surveyed area. The system is flexible in that the user can readily define the types of objects to classify and the object characteristics that should be considered during classification.

Towards web-based semantic enrichment of 3D insects

Natural history collections are an invaluable resource housing a wealth of knowledge with a long tradition of contributing to a wide range of fields such as taxonomy, quarantine, conservation and climate change. It is recognized however [Smith and Blagoderov 2012] that such physical collections are often heavily underutilized as a result of the practical issues of accessibility. The digitization of these collections is a step towards removing these access issues, but other hurdles must be addressed before we truly unlock the potential of this knowledge.

Participation or further exclusion? : Contestations over forest conservation and control in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania

This Ph.D. thesis Participation or Further Exclusion? Contestations over Forest Conservation and Control in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania describes and analyses the shift in the prevailing discourse of forest and biodiversity conservation policies and strategies towards more participatory approaches in Tanzania, and the changes in the practises of resource control. I explore the scope for and limits to the different actors and groups who are considered to form the community, to participate in resource control, in a specific historical and socio-economic context. I analyse whether, how and to which extent the targets of such participatory conservation interventions have been able to affect the formal rules and practices of resource control, and explore their different responses and discursive and other strategies in relation to conservation efforts. I approach the problematic through exploring certain participatory conservation interventions and related negotiations between the local farmers, government officials and the external actors in the case of two protected forest reserves in the southern part of the East Usambaras, Tanzania. The study area belongs to the Eastern Arc Mountains that are valued globally and nationally for their high level of biodiversity and number of endemic and near endemic species. The theoretical approach draws from theorising on power, participation and conservation in anthropology of development and post-structuralist political ecology. The material was collected in three stages between 2003 and 2008 by using an ethnographic approach. I interviewed and observed the actors and their resource use and control practices at the local level, including the representatives of the villagers living close to the protected forests and the conservation agency, but also followed the selected processes and engaged with the non-local agencies involved in the conservation efforts in the East Usambaras. In addition, the more recent processes of change and the actors strategies in resource control were contextualised against the social and environmental history of the study area and the evolvement of institutions of natural resource control. My findings indicate that the discourse of participation that has emerged in global conservation policy debate within the past three decades, and is being institutionalised in the national policies in many countries, including Tanzania, has shaped the practices of forest conservation in the East Usambaras, although in a fragmented and uneven way. Instrumental interpretation of participation, in which it is to serve the goals of improving the control of the forest and making it more acceptable and efficient, has prevailed among the governmental actors and conservation organisations. Yet, there is variation between the different projects and actors promoting participatory conservation regarding the goals and means of participation, e.g. to which extent the local people are to be involved in decision-making. The actors representing communities also have their diverse agendas, understandings and experiences regarding the rationality, outcomes and benefits of being involved in forest control, making the practices of control fluid. The elements of the exclusive conservation thinking and practices co-exist with the more recent participatory processes, and continue to shape the understandings and strategies of the actors involved in resource control. The ideas and narratives of the different discourses are reproduced and selectively used by the parties involved. The idea of forest conservation is not resisted as such by most of the actors at local level, quite the opposite. However, the strict regulations and rules governing access to resources, such as valuable timber species, continue to be disputed by many. Furthermore, the history of control, such as past injustices related to conservation and unfulfilled promises, undermines the participation of certain social groups in resource control and benefit sharing. This also creates controversies in the practices of conservation, and fuels conflicts regarding the establishment of new protected areas. In spite of this, the fact that the representatives of the communities have been invited to the arenas where information is shared, and principles and conditions of forest control and benefit sharing are discussed and partly decided upon, has created expectations among the participants, and opened up opportunities for some of the local actors to enhance their own, and sometimes wider interests in relation to resource control and the related benefits. The local actors experiences of the previous government and other interventions strongly affect how they position themselves in relation to conservation interventions, and their responses and strategies. However, my findings also suggest, in a similar way to research conducted in some other protected areas, that the benefits of participation in conservation and resource control tend to accrue unevenly between different groups of local people, e.g. due to unequal access to information and differences in their initial resources and social position.

Conservation of Atlantic salmon by supplementary stocking of juvenile fish

Wild salmon stocks in the northern Baltic rivers became endangered in the second half of the 20th century, mainly due to recruitment overfishing. As a result, supplementary stocking was widely practised, and supplementation of the Tornionjoki salmon stock took place over a 25 year period until 2002. The stock has been closely monitored by electrofishing, smolt trapping, mark-recapture studies, catch samples and catch surveys. Background information on hatchery-reared stocked juveniles was also collected for this study. Bayesian statistics was applied to the data as this method offers the possibility of bringing prior information into the analysis and an advanced ability for incorporating uncertainty, and also provides probabilities for a multitude of hypotheses. Substantial divergences between reared and wild Tornionjoki salmon were identified in both demographic and phenological characteristics. The divergences tended to be larger the longer the duration spent in hatchery and the more favourable the hatchery conditions were for fast growth. Differences in environment likely induced most of the divergences, but selection of brood fish might have resulted in genotypic divergence in maturation age of reared salmon. Survival of stocked 1-year old juveniles to smolt varied from about 10% to about 25%. Stocking on the lower reach of the river seemed to decrease survival, and the negative effect of stocking volume on survival raises the concern of possible similar effects on the extant wild population. Post-smolt survival of wild Tornionjoki smolts was on average two times higher than that of smolts stocked as parr and 2.5 times higher than that of stocked smolts. Smolts of different groups showed synchronous variation and similar long-term survival trends. Both groups of reared salmon were more vulnerable to offshore driftnet and coastal trapnet fishing than wild salmon. Average survival from smolt to spawners of wild salmon was 2.8 times higher than that of salmon stocked as parr and 3.3 times higher than that of salmon stocked as smolts. Wild salmon and salmon stocked as parr were found to have similar lifetime survival rates, while stocked smolts have a lifetime survival rate over 4 times higher than the two other groups. If eggs are collected from the wild brood fish, stocking parr would therefore not be a sensible option. Stocking smolts instead would create a net benefit in terms of the number of spawners, but this strategy has serious drawbacks and risks associated with the larger phenotypic and demographic divergences from wild salmon. Supplementation was shown not to be the key factor behind the recovery of the Tornionjoki and other northern Baltic salmon stocks. Instead, a combination of restrictions in the sea fishery and simultaneous occurrence of favourable natural conditions for survival were the main reasons for the revival in the 1990 s. This study questions the effectiveness of supplementation as a conservation management tool. The benefits of supplementation seem at best limited. Relatively high occurrences of reared fish in catches may generate false optimism concerning the effects of supplementation. Supplementation may lead to genetic risks due to problems in brood fish collection and artificial rearing with relaxed natural selection and domestication. Appropriate management of fisheries is the main alternative to supplementation, without which all other efforts for long-term maintenance of a healthy fish resource fail.

Species-based and community-level approaches to conservation prioritization

One major reason for the global decline of biodiversity is habitat loss and fragmentation. Conservation areas can be designed to reduce biodiversity loss, but as resources are limited, conservation efforts need to be prioritized in order to achieve best possible outcomes. The field of systematic conservation planning developed as a response to opportunistic approaches to conservation that often resulted in biased representation of biological diversity. The last two decades have seen the development of increasingly sophisticated methods that account for information about biodiversity conservation goals (benefits), economical considerations (costs) and socio-political constraints. In this thesis I focus on two general topics related to systematic conservation planning. First, I address two aspects of the question about how biodiversity features should be valued. (i) I investigate the extremely important but often neglected issue of differential prioritization of species for conservation. Species prioritization can be based on various criteria, and is always goal-dependent, but can also be implemented in a scientifically more rigorous way than what is the usual practice. (ii) I introduce a novel framework for conservation prioritization, which is based on continuous benefit functions that convert increasing levels of biodiversity feature representation to increasing conservation value using the principle that more is better. Traditional target-based systematic conservation planning is a special case of this approach, in which a step function is used for the benefit function. We have further expanded the benefit function framework for area prioritization to address issues such as protected area size and habitat vulnerability. In the second part of the thesis I address the application of community level modelling strategies to conservation prioritization. One of the most serious issues in systematic conservation planning currently is not the deficiency of methodology for selection and design, but simply the lack of data. Community level modelling offers a surrogate strategy that makes conservation planning more feasible in data poor regions. We have reviewed the available community-level approaches to conservation planning. These range from simplistic classification techniques to sophisticated modelling and selection strategies. We have also developed a general and novel community level approach to conservation prioritization that significantly improves on methods that were available before. This thesis introduces further degrees of realism into conservation planning methodology. The benefit function -based conservation prioritization framework largely circumvents the problematic phase of target setting, and allowing for trade-offs between species representation provides a more flexible and hopefully more attractive approach to conservation practitioners. The community-level approach seems highly promising and should prove valuable for conservation planning especially in data poor regions. Future work should focus on integrating prioritization methods to deal with multiple aspects in combination influencing the prioritization process, and further testing and refining the community level strategies using real, large datasets.

Ecology, population genetics and conservation of the African violet

The ongoing rapid fragmentation of tropical forests is a major threat to global biodiversity. This is because many of the tropical forests are so-called biodiversity 'hotspots', areas that host exceptional species richness and concentrations of endemic species. Forest fragmentation has negative ecological and genetic consequences for plant survival. Proposed reasons for plant species' loss in forest fragments are, e.g., abiotic edge effects, altered species interactions, increased genetic drift, and inbreeding depression. To be able to conserve plants in forest fragments, the ecological and genetic processes that threaten the species have to be understood. That is possible only after obtaining adequate information on their biology, including taxonomy, life history, reproduction, and spatial and genetic structure of the populations. In this research, I focused on the African violet (genus Saintpaulia), a little-studied conservation flagship from the Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests hotspot of Tanzania and Kenya. The main objective of the research was to increase understanding of the life history, ecology and population genetics of Saintpaulia that is needed for the design of appropriate conservation measures. A further aim was to provide population-level insights into the difficult taxonomy of Saintpaulia. Ecological field work was conducted in a relatively little fragmented protected forest in the Amani Nature Reserve in the East Usambara Mountains, in northeastern Tanzania, complemented by population genetic laboratory work and ecological experiments in Helsinki, Finland. All components of the research were conducted with Saintpaulia ionantha ssp. grotei, which forms a taxonomically controversial population complex in the study area. My results suggest that Saintpaulia has good reproductive performance in forests with low disturbance levels in the East Usambara Mountains. Another important finding was that seed production depends on sufficient pollinator service. The availability of pollinators should thus be considered in the in situ management of threatened populations. Dynamic population stage structures were observed suggesting that the studied populations are demographically viable. High mortality of seedlings and juveniles was observed during the dry season but this was compensated by ample recruitment of new seedlings after the rainy season. Reduced tree canopy closure and substrate quality are likely to exacerbate seedling and juvenile mortality, and, therefore, forest fragmentation and disturbance are serious threats to the regeneration of Saintpaulia. Restoration of sufficient shade to enhance seedling establishment is an important conservation measure in populations located in disturbed habitats. Long-term demographic monitoring, which enables the forecasting of a population s future, is also recommended in disturbed habitats. High genetic diversities were observed in the populations, which suggest that they possess the variation that is needed for evolutionary responses in a changing environment. Thus, genetic management of the studied populations does not seem necessary as long as the habitats remain favourable for Saintpaulia. The observed high levels of inbreeding in some of the populations, and the reduced fitness of the inbred progeny compared to the outbred progeny, as revealed by the hand-pollination experiment, indicate that inbreeding and inbreeding depression are potential mechanisms contributing to the extinction of Saintpaulia populations. The relatively weak genetic divergence of the three different morphotypes of Saintpaulia ionantha ssp. grotei lend support to the hypothesis that the populations in the Usambara/lowlands region represent a segregating metapopulation (or metapopulations), where subpopulations are adapting to their particular environments. The partial genetic and phenological integrity, and the distinct trailing habit of the morphotype 'grotei' would, however, justify its placement in a taxonomic rank of its own, perhaps in a subspecific rank.

The potential of certification for conservation and management of wild MAP resources

Medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) are an integral part of our biodiversity. In majority of MAP rich countries, wild collection practices are the livelihood options for a large number of rural peoples and MAPs play a significant role in socio-economic development of their communities. Recent concern over the alarming situation of the status of wild MAP resources, raw material quality, as well as social exploitation of rural communities, leads to the idea of certification for MAP resource conservation and management. On one hand, while MAP certification addresses environmental, social and economic perspectives of MAP resources, on the other hand, it ensures multi-stakeholder participation in improvement of the MAP sector. This paper presents an overview of MAP certification encompassing its different parameters, current scenario (Indian background), implementation strategies as well as stakeholders’ role in MAP conservation. It also highlights Indian initiatives in this direction.

Expecting the unexpected: Kathryn Kelly : La Boite Indie Fresh Ground

Compare your last night of theatre with your first. Like internet dating, the consummation is the same, but the rules of engagement have changed. A decade of ‘independent seasons’ nested within our mainstages has littered the moat-like foyers of our state-funded theatres with couches, reshaped their intractable prosceniums into new configurations and collapsed many of the traditional artform hierarchies.