Seagrass conservation and monitoring in Myanmar: the biodiversity, distribution and coverage of seagrasses in the Tanintharyi and Rakhine

Surveys on seagrass taxonomy, distribution and extent were carried out in 14 locations within Myeik Archipelago and along the Rakhine Coast.

New insights into the karyotypic relationships of Chinese muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi), forest musk deer (Moschus berezovskii) and gayal (Bos frontalis)

To investigate the karyotypic relationships between Chinese muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi), forest musk deer (Moschus berezovskii) and gayal (Bos frontalis), a complete set of Chinese muntjac chromosome-specific painting probes has been assigned to G-banded chromosomes of these three species. Sixteen autosomal probes (i.e. 6-10, 12-22) of the Chinese muntjac each delineated one pair of conserved segments in the forest musk deer and gayal, respectively. The remaining six autosomal probes (1-5, and 11) each delineated two to five pairs of conserved segments. In total, the 22 autosomal painting probes of Chinese muntjac delineated 33 and 34 conserved chromosomal segments in the genomes of forest musk deer and gayal, respectively. The combined analysis of comparative chromosome painting and G-band comparison reveals that most interspecific homologous segments show a high degree of conservation in G-banding patterns. Eleven chromosome fissions and five chromosome fusions differentiate the karyotypes of Chinese muntjac and forest musk deer; twelve chromosome fissions and six fusions are required to convert the Chinese muntjac karyotype to that of gayal; one chromosome fission and one fusion separate the forest musk deer and gayal. The musk deer has retained a highly conserved karyotype that closely resembles the proposed ancestral pecoran karyotype but shares none of the rearrangements characteristic for the Cervidae and Bovidae. Our results substantiate that chromosomes 1-5 and 11 of Chinese muntjac originated through exclusive centromere-to-telomere fusions of ancestral acrocentric chromosomes. Copyright (C) 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel.

The history of fish communities, biodiversity and environment of Lake Victoria and the lessons learnt

The first fishery survey of Lake Victoria was conducted between 1927 and 1928 (Graham 1929). Atthat time, the lake had a diverse fish fauna and the fishery was dominated by two endemic tilapiine cichlids; Oreochromis esculentus (Graham 1929) and O. variabilis (Boulenger 1906). There were a number of other species such as Protopterus aethiopicus Heckel 1851, Bagrus docmac (Forsk.) 1775, Clarias gariepinus (Burchell), Barbus species, mormyrids, Synodontis spp, Schilbe intermedius (Linn.) 1762 and Rastrineobola argentea Pellegrin, 1904 that were also abundant in the lake most of which made a significant contribution to the fishery (Graham 1929, Worthington 1929, 1932, Kudhongania & Cordone 1974). Haplochromine cichlids were represented by at least 300 species more than 99% of them endemic (Greenwood, 1974; Witte et al., 1992 a & b). The fishery of Lake Victoria was similar to that of lakes Kyoga and Nabugabo (Worthington 1929; Trewavas 1933; Greenwood 1965, 1966; Beadle 1962, 1981). There were also important fisheries on the inflowing rivers of Lake Victoria, the most important of which were Labeo victorianus and Barbus altianalis (Cadwallader 1965). The small sized species notably Rastrineobola argentea and haplochromines cichlids were not originally commercially exploited.

Capturing views of men, women and youth on agricultural biodiversity resources consumed in Barotseland, Zambia

This paper presents data and findings from focus group discussions in study communities selected by the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS) in the Western Province of Zambia. The discussions focused on cultivated crops and vegetables collected from open fields and consumed as food. Participatory tools for agricultural biodiversity (agrobiodiversity) assessment were used to capture community perspectives on plant species and varietal diversity; factors influencing the availability and use of plants for food; unique, common and rare crop species cultivated in a community, identified through a four-cell analysis methodology; and core problems, root causes, effects and necessary actions to tackle them, using problem tree or situation analysis methods.

Characterization of genetic biodiversity of Nile perch, Lates niloticus, Tilapiines, Haplochromine flock and Ningu (Labeo victorianus) in the Victoria Lake Basin: an overview

Genetic biodiversity is the vaflatlOn among individuals within and between units of interbreeding individuals (populations) of a species. It includes inheritable and transmittable differences that occur between individuals andlor popuhitions of a given species through reproductive interaction. There exists enormous variability among individuals andlor populations of a species for most living organisms, and most of this variation is inheritable. differences among individuals arise through mutation and via recombination of genes during meiosis. These ifferences are then transmitted to successive generations through sexual reproduction and maintained in the populations through processes such as natural selection and genetic drift. Unfortunately much of this variation is normally threatened and often in danger of extinction because most focus in conservation of natural resources is put at saving species or habitats than varieties or strains of a species

Biodiversity values of different aquatic systems, habitats and organisms in relation to restoration and sustaining of biodiversity

Biodiversity values provide objective data and advice from which policy makes could assess the conservation options and determine optimal policies that would balance the needs of conservation with the socia-economic needs of the people in the area.

Bird and mammal conservation in Gaoligongshan Region and Jingdong County, Yunnan, China: patterns of species richness and nature reserves

Elevational and latitudinal patterns of species richness for birds and mammals were compared with human population density in relation to nature reserve designation in two areas of Yunnan Province, China. Results suggest that species richness is not the same for the two areas. In Gaoligongshan Region, species richness is inversely correlated with elevation and altitude, while reserve designation is positively correlated with elevation and latitude. In Jingdong County, reserve designations are positively correlated with elevation, but species richness shows no clear trends. In general, the present situation is strongly influenced by human activities. It appears that reserve designation is mismatched with species richness in Gaoligongshan Region, while there is a better fit between the two in Jingdong County. In both areas, however, it appeared that reserves were located primarily in order to reduce conflict with humans rather than to maximize conservation of biodiversity, probably because humans were responsible for forest-especially primary forest-destruction and degradation in the low-lying areas.

Enzyme-free glucose biosensor based on low density CNT forest grown directly on a Si/SiO2 substrate

A highly sensitive nonenzymatic amperometric glucose sensor was fabricated by using Ni nanoparticles homogeneously dispersed within and on the top of a vertically aligned CNT forest (CNT/Ni nanocomposite sensor), which was directly grown on a Si/SiO2 substrate. The surface morphology and elemental analysis were characterized using scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy, respectively. Cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry were used to evaluate the catalytic activities of CNT/Ni electrode. The CNT/Ni nanocomposite sensor exhibited a great enhancement of anodic peak current after adding 5 mM glucose in alkaline solution. The sensor can also be applied to the quantification of glucose content with a linear range covering from 5 μM to 7 mM, a high sensitivity of 1433 μA mM-1 cm-2, and a low detection limit of 2 μM. The CNT/Ni nanocomposite sensor exhibits good reproducibility and long-term stability, moreover, it was also relatively insensitive to commonly interfering species, such as uric acid, ascorbic acid, acetaminophen, sucrose and d-fructose. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

High contrast holograms using nanotube forest

Nanotube forest behaves as highly absorbent material when they are randomly placed in sub-wavelength scales. Furthermore, it is possible to create diffractive structures when these bulks are patterned in a substrate. Here, we introduce an alternative to fabricate intensity holograms by patterning fringes of nanotube forest on a substrate. The result is an efficient intensity hologram that is not restricted to sub-wavelength patterning. Both the theoretical and experimental analysis was performed with good agreement. The produced holograms show a uniform behaviour throughout the visible spectra. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

Unconstrained monocular 3D human pose estimation by action detection and cross-modality regression forest

This work addresses the challenging problem of unconstrained 3D human pose estimation (HPE) from a novel perspective. Existing approaches struggle to operate in realistic applications, mainly due to their scene-dependent priors, such as background segmentation and multi-camera network, which restrict their use in unconstrained environments. We therfore present a framework which applies action detection and 2D pose estimation techniques to infer 3D poses in an unconstrained video. Action detection offers spatiotemporal priors to 3D human pose estimation by both recognising and localising actions in space-time. Instead of holistic features, e.g. silhouettes, we leverage the flexibility of deformable part model to detect 2D body parts as a feature to estimate 3D poses. A new unconstrained pose dataset has been collected to justify the feasibility of our method, which demonstrated promising results, significantly outperforming the relevant state-of-the-arts. © 2013 IEEE.

The Random Forest Kernel and other kernels for big data from random partitions

We present Random Partition Kernels, a new class of kernels derived by demonstrating a natural connection between random partitions of objects and kernels between those objects. We show how the construction can be used to create kernels from methods that would not normally be viewed as random partitions, such as Random Forest. To demonstrate the potential of this method, we propose two new kernels, the Random Forest Kernel and the Fast Cluster Kernel, and show that these kernels consistently outperform standard kernels on problems involving real-world datasets. Finally, we show how the form of these kernels lend themselves to a natural approximation that is appropriate for certain big data problems, allowing $O(N)$ inference in methods such as Gaussian Processes, Support Vector Machines and Kernel PCA.

The distribution and economic losses of alien species invasion to China

Invasive alien species have become one of the most serious environmental issues in the world. Data of taxon, origin, pathway, and environmental impacts of invasive alien microorganisms, invertebrates, amphibians and reptiles, fish, birds, mammals, herbs, trees, and, marine organisms in terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems of China were analyzed during 2001 and 2003, based on literature retrieval and field survey. There were 283 invasive alien species in China, and the number of species of invasive alien microorganisms, aquatic plants, terrestrial plants, aquatic invertebrates, terrestrial invertebrates, amphibians and reptiles, fish, and mammals were 19, 18, 170, 25, 33, 3, 10, and 5, respectively. The proportion of invasive alien species originated from America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania were 55.1, 21.7, 9.9, 8.1, and 0.6%, respectively. Methods for estimation of direct economic losses to agriculture, forestry, stockbreeding, fishery, road and water transportation, storage, water conservancy, environment and public facilities, and human health were established. Methods for estimation of indirect economic losses caused by invasive alien species to service functions of forest ecosystems, agricultural ecosystems, grassland ecosystems, and wetland ecosystems were also established. The total economic losses caused by invasive alien species to China were to the time of USD 14.45 billion, with direct and indirect economic losses accounting for 16.59% and 83.41% of total economic losses, respectively.