Table 2. Percentage of palynomorphs found in each sample through Longling section

The Longling Coal Mine (W. Yunnan) is situated in an area of substantial geotectonic activity. Its Late Pliocene palynoflora is of considerable interest, since the area represents a centre of biodiversity. Eighty-two palynomorphs belonging to 61 families were recovered from the lignite. The palynoflora is dominated by angiosperms (68.3%), with ferns (24.4%), gymnosperms (4.9%) and algae (2.4%). Comparisons indicate that most of the palynoflora was derived from the Montane Humid Evergreen Broad-leaved Forest, with lesser contributions from the Tsuga dumosa Forest and Evergreen Coniferous Broad-leaved Mixed Forest, as well as the Montane Mossy Evergreen Broad-leaved Forest. This indicates that the Late Pliocene climate was cooler than that of the present. In the course of the accumulation of the lignite, the climate underwent five major phases of warming and cooling.

Effective acoustical monitoring tools for Mannophryne lamarcai

We performed the field-work during the dry (March 2014) and reainy season (May and June 2014) at the species type locality: Cerro Socopó, located at central-west region between Falcón, Lara and Zulia states, Venezuela. Socopó is a small and isolated mountain (1.571 m) belonging to the Ziruma mountains, and represents a relict of tropical mountain forest surrounded by semi-arid vegetation and grassland. This area is home to 312 species of vertebrates, including endangered and endemic amphibians species like Mannophryne lamarcai, Leptodactylus magistris and Dendropsophus amicorum. These forest and species are severely threatened by cattle ranch and illegal timber extraction, with forest formations only above 1000 meters. Despite this, no legal protected figure has been established in the area. We identified a 2.5 km secondary road transect within the study area based on the following criteria: 1) it cover different habitat types (streams and lagoons); and 2) it within the altitudinal gradient described for the specie (1,040 to 1,363 m). We identified three sampling points throughout the transect located in the vicinity of wetland habits: socopo1, socopo2 and socopo4. We did two types of recordings: 1) high quality recordings to characterize the advertisement call for M. lamarcai, non described to date (socopo4), and 2) recordings in different sampling points to evaluate call detectors performance in different acoustic scenarios (in all three localities).

Coastal Urban Flood Resislience versus Climate Change

Processes of founding and expanding cities in coastal areas have undergone great changes over time driven by environmental conditions. Coastal settlements looked for places above flood levels and away from swamps and other wetlands whenever possible. As populations grew, cities were extending trying to avoid low and wet lands. No city has been able to limit its growth. The risk of flooding can never be eliminated, but only reduced to the extent possible. Flooding of coastal areas is today dramatically attributed to eustasic sea level rise caused by global climate change. This can be inaccurate. Current climate change is generating an average sea level upward trend, but other regional and local factors result in this trend being accentuated in some places or attenuated, and even reversed, in others. Then, the intensity and frequency of coastal flooding around the planet, although not so much as a unique result of this general eustasic elevation, but rather of the superposition of marine and crustal dynamic elements, the former also climate-related, which give rise to a temporary raising in average sea level in the short term. Since the Little Ice Age the planet has been suffering a global warming change leading to sea level rise. The idea of being too obeying to anthropogenic factors may be attributed to Arrhenius (1896), though it is of much later highlight after the sixties of the last century. Never before, the human factor had been able of such an influence on climate. However, other types of changes in sea levels became apparent, resulting from vertical movements of the crust, modifications of sea basins due to continents fracturing, drifting and coming together, or to different types of climate patterns. Coastal zones are then doubly susceptible to floods. Precipitation immediately triggers pluvial flooding. If it continues upland or when snow and glaciers melt eventually fluvial flooding can occur. The urban development presence represents modifying factors. Additional interference is caused by river and waste water drainage systems. Climate also influences sea levels in coastal areas, where tides as well as the structure and dynamic of the geoid and its crust come into play. From the sea, waters can flood and break or push back berms and other coastline borders. The sea level, controlling the mouth of the main channel of the basin's drainage system, is ultimately what governs flood levels. A temporary rise in sea level acts as a dam at the mouth. Even in absence of that global change, so, floods are likely going to increase in many urban coastal areas. Some kind of innovative methodologies and practices should be needed to get more flood resilience cities

Plant regeneration from an endangered valuable cork oak tree by somatic embryogenesis.

Among the several applications of in vitro tissue culture techniques, the conservation of plant germplasm is one of the most widely used. The cork oak is one of the principal tree species in the Western Mediterranean región. Within this área, the Balearic Islands are considered to be a glacial refuge, and therefore a reservoir of genetic resources. A singular tree has been found in the small Minorca Island population. The haplotype of this tree is of Tyrrhenian origin, showing a past link between Minorca and Sardinia. Moreover, this tree do not bear a deletion within an ITS from ribosimic nuclear DNA, which is fairly common in many populations of this species, and indicates that ir may be the descendant of a very ancient population. This tree is currently in a precarious condition, and it has not produced acorns in the last years. Hence there is a clear need of vegetative propagation to conserve this genotype. We have previously developed methods to clone adult cork oak tres by somatic embryogenesis, and therefore the aim of the present work was to clone this singular tree. There braches from the corwn were collected in November 2004, and methods previously described were carried out. By February 2005 somatic embryogenesis was obtained from leaves of the tree with percentages on induction ranging from 17 to 54% depending on the branch, which may show a novel source of variation that requires further study. Spontaneously matured somatic embryos germinated at 46% in average, and the first somatic seedlings from the Alfavaret's cork oak tree were obtained. Therefore, this study shows one of the most relevant applications of somatic embryogenesis: the plant regeneration of valuable genotypes for the in situ and ex situ conservation of forest genetic resources.