Methods of modeling the future shift of the so called Moesz-line

It is important to the landscape architects to become acquainted with the results of the regional climate models so they can adapt to the warmer and more arid future climate. Modelling the potential distribution area of certain plants, which was the theme of our former research, can be a convenient method to visualize the effects of the climate change. A similar but slightly better method is modelling the Moesz-line, which gives information on distribution and usability of numerous plants simultaneously. Our aim is to display the results on maps and compare the different modelling methods (Line modelling, Distribution modelling, Isotherm modelling). The results are spectacular and meet our expectations: according to two of the three tested methods the Moesz-line will shift from South Slovakia to Central Poland in the next 60 years.

Ornamental plants as climatic indicators of arthropod vectors

The importance and risk of vector-borne diseases (eg. leishmaniasis, West Nile Virus, Lyme borreliosis) is going to increase in the European temperate areas due to climate change. Our previous studies have shown that the potential distribution of Leishmania infantum and some Phlebotomus (sand fly) species – a parasite of leishmaniasis, and its vectors – may be expanded even to the southern coastline of the Baltic Sea by the end of the 21st century. The lowland areas of the Carpathian Basin and the main part of Hungary are projected to be suitable for the studied sand fly vectors in the near future. It is important to find some indicator plants to examine whether the sand flies are able to live in a certain climate at a certain time. We studied several Mediterranean and Sub-Mediterranean plant species, and we found that the aggregated distribution of three ligneous species (Juniperus oxycedrus L., Quercus ilex L. and Pinus brutia Ten.) shows high correlation with the union distribution of five sand flies (Phlebotomus ariasi Tonn., Ph. neglectus Tonn., Ph. perfiliewi Parrot, Ph. perniciosus Newst. and Ph. tobbi Adler, Theodor et Lourie). Since these Mediterranean species are highly tolerant of the edaphic characteristics of the planting site, they may prove to be good indicators. The present and upcoming climate of Hungary is seen to be suitable for the selected indicator plant species, and it draws attention to and verifies the potential of the expansion of sand flies, which has been proved by some recent observations of the vectors in Southern Hungary.

Európai lepkeszúnyog fajok potenciális elterjedése a 21. században

Leishmaniasis is a typical vectorial disease transmitted by Psycodidae vectors (Lutzomyans, Phlebotomus species). The worldwide observed 1,5-2 million new cases and 60,000 death caused by Leishmania parasites per year make leishmaniasis is one of the most important vectorial disease in the tropicals and warm temperate areas of the World. In the human environment dogs and cats are the most important hosts of the different leishmania agents. The different leishmania species cause symptomatically cutan or visceral disease forms, but many other type of the disease has recognised. Phlebotomus species are sensitive to climatic patterns, they require hight relative air humidity, mild winters and long and warm vegetation period, but the environmental requirements of the species naturally is not the same. Due to climate change in the near future the climate of Western and Central Europe could allow the colonisation of these highly populated areas with also the vectors and the parasites. Our aim was to analyse the environmental patterns of the current distribution area of 8 important sand flies (P. ariasi, P. perniciosus, P. perfiliewi, P. papatasi, P. tobbi, P. neglectus, P. similis and P. sergenti) using the 1960-1990 period’s climate as reference. Using climate envelope modeling we determined these climatic characters and using the REMO climate projection we created the recent and the near-future (2011-2040 and 2041-2070) potential distribution area of the sand flies. The current known area of many Phlebotomus species restricted either to the western or to the eastern Mediterranean Basin. We found that their climatic requirements are could not explain their segregation, it is maybe the consequence of their evolutionary history (geographical barriers and paleoclimatic history). By the end of the 2060’s most parts of Western Europe can be colonized by sand flies, mostly by P. ariasi and P. pernicosus. P. ariasi showed the greatest potential northward expansion. Our model resulted 1 to 2 months prolongation of the potentially active period of P. neglectus P. papatasi and P. perniciosus for the 2070’s in Southern Hungary. As the climate becomes drier and warmer, sand flies will occupy more and more parts of Hungary. Our findings confirm the concerns that leishmanisais can become a real hazard for the major part of the European population to the end of the 21th century and the Carpathian Basin is a particularly vulnerable area.

Ornamental plants as climatic indicators of arthropod vectors

The importance and risk of vector-borne diseases (e.g., leishmaniasis, West Nile Virus, Lyme borreliosis) is going to increase in the European temperate areas due to climate change. Our previous studies have shown that the potential distribution of Leishmania infantum and some Phlebotomus (sand fly) species – a parasite of leishmaniasis, and its vectors – may be expanded even to the southern coastline of the Baltic Sea by the end of the 21st century. The lowland areas of the Carpathian Basin and the main part of Hungary are projected to be suitable for the studied sand fly vectors in the near future. It is important to find some indicator plants to examine whether the sand flies are able to live in a certain climate at a certain time. We studied several Mediterranean and Sub-Mediterranean plant species, and we found that the aggregated distribution of three ligneous species (Juniperus oxycedrus L., Quercus ilex L. and Pinus brutia Ten.) shows high correlation with the union distribution of five sand flies (Phlebotomus ariasi Tonn., Ph. neglectus Tonn., Ph. perfiliewi Parrot, Ph. perniciosus Newst. and Ph. tobbi Adler, Theodor et Lourie). Since these Mediterranean species are highly tolerant of the edaphic characteristics of the planting site, they may prove to be good indicators. The present and upcoming climate of Hungary is seen to be suitable for the selected indicator plant species, and it draws attention to and verifies the potential of the expansion of sand flies, which has been proved by some recent observations of the vectors in Southern Hungary.

An ArcGIS Tool for Modeling the Climate Envelope with Feed-Forward ANN

This paper is about the development and the application of an ESRI ArcGIS tool which implements multi-layer, feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) to study the climate envelope of species. The supervised learning is achieved by backpropagation algorithm. Based on the distribution and the grids of the climate (and edaphic data) of the reference and future periods the tool predicts the future potential distribution of the studied species. The trained network can be saved and loaded. A modeling result based on the distribution of European larch (Larix decidua Mill.) is presented as a case study.

Ecologia e história natural de população Hemidactylus agrius (Squamata: Gekkonidae) em área de Caatinga, com avaliação da distribuição das espécies nativas do gênero no nordeste do Brasil

The genus Hemidactylus Oken, 1817 has cosmopolite distribution, with three species occurring in Brazil, two of them native, H. brasilianus and H. agrius, and one exotic, H. mabouia. Considering the studies about ecology of lizards conducted in the Ecological Station of the Seridó, from 2001 to 2011, this study aimed (1) to re-evaluate the occurrence of the species of Hemidactylus in this ESEC; (2) to analyze ecological and biological aspects of the H. agrius population; and (3) to investigate the current and potential distribution of the native species of the genus in northeastern Brazil, analyzing the suitability of ESEC to this taxon. For the first two objectives, a sampling area consisting of five transects of 200 x 20 m, was inspected in alternating daily shifts for three consecutive days, from August 2012 to August 2013. For the latter objective, occurrence points of H. agrius and H. brasilianus from literature and from the database of Herpetological Collections of the UFRN and the UNICAMP were consulted to build predictive maps via the Maximum Entropy algorithm (MaxEnt). In ESEC Seridó, 62 H. agrius individuals were collected (25 females, 18 males and 19 juveniles), and two neonates were obtained from a communal nest incubated in the laboratory. No record was made for the other two species of the genus. Hemidactylus agrius demonstrated to be a nocturnal species specialized in habitats with rocky outcrops; but this species is generalist regarding microhabitat use. In the population studied, females had an average body length greater than males, and showed higher frequencies of caudal autotomy. Regarding diet, H. agrius is a moderately generalist species that consumes arthropods, especially insect larvae, Isoptera and Araneae; and vertebrates, with a case of cannibalism registered in the population. With respect to seasonal differences, only the number of food items ingested differed between seasons. The diet was similar between sexes, but ontogenetic differences were recorded for the total volume and maximum length of the food items. Significant relationships were found between lizard body/head size measurements and the maximum length of prey consumed. Cases of polydactyly and tail bifurcation were recorded in the population, with frequencies of 1.6% and 3.1%, respectively. In relation xv to the occurrence points of the native species, 27 were identified, 14 for H. agrius and 13 for H. brasilianus. The first species presented restricted distribution, while the second showed a wide distribution. In both models generated, the ESEC Seridó area showed medium to high suitability. The results of this study confirm the absence of H. brasilianus and H. mabouia this ESEC, and reveal H. agrius as a dietary opportunist and cannibal species. Further, the results confirm the distribution patterns shown by native species of Hemidactylus, and point ESEC Seridó as an area of probable occurrence for the species of the genus, the establishing of H. brasilianus and H. mabouia are probably limited by biotic factors, a fact yet little understood

Mapped cetacean habitat suitability and richness in the Azores, links to ArcGIS files

Marine spatial planning and ecological research call for high-resolution species distribution data. However, those data are still not available for most marine large vertebrates. The dynamic nature of oceanographic processes and the wide-ranging behavior of many marine vertebrates create further difficulties, as distribution data must incorporate both the spatial and temporal dimensions. Cetaceans play an essential role in structuring and maintaining marine ecosystems and face increasing threats from human activities. The Azores holds a high diversity of cetaceans but the information about spatial and temporal patterns of distribution for this marine megafauna group in the region is still very limited. To tackle this issue, we created monthly predictive cetacean distribution maps for spring and summer months, using data collected by the Azores Fisheries Observer Programme between 2004 and 2009. We then combined the individual predictive maps to obtain species richness maps for the same period. Our results reflect a great heterogeneity in distribution among species and within species among different months. This heterogeneity reflects a contrasting influence of oceanographic processes on the distribution of cetacean species. However, some persistent areas of increased species richness could also be identified from our results. We argue that policies aimed at effectively protecting cetaceans and their habitats must include the principle of dynamic ocean management coupled with other area-based management such as marine spatial planning.

Sistematic, population genetics, propagation and conservation of Prunus azorica (Rosaceae)

Tese de Doutoramento, Biologia (Ecologia Vegetal), 25 de Junho de 2013, Universidade dos Açores.

Sistematics, population genetics, propagation and conservation of Picconia azorica (Tutin) Knobl. (Oleaceae)

Tese de Doutoramento, Biologia (Ecologia Vegetal), 24 de Junho de 2013, Universidade dos Açores.

Obtaining environmental favourability functions from logistic regression

Logistic regression is a statistical tool widely used for predicting species’ potential distributions starting from presence/absence data and a set of independent variables. However, logistic regression equations compute probability values based not only on the values of the predictor variables but also on the relative proportion of presences and absences in the dataset, which does not adequately describe the environmental favourability for or against species presence. A few strategies have been used to circumvent this, but they usually imply an alteration of the original data or the discarding of potentially valuable information. We propose a way to obtain from logistic regression an environmental favourability function whose results are not affected by an uneven proportion of presences and absences. We tested the method on the distribution of virtual species in an imaginary territory. The favourability models yielded similar values regardless of the variation in the presence/absence ratio. We also illustrate with the example of the Pyrenean desman’s (Galemys pyrenaicus) distribution in Spain. The favourability model yielded more realistic potential distribution maps than the logistic regression model. Favourability values can be regarded as the degree of membership of the fuzzy set of sites whose environmental conditions are favourable to the species, which enables applying the rules of fuzzy logic to distribution modelling. They also allow for direct comparisons between models for species with different presence/absence ratios in the study area. This makes themmore useful to estimate the conservation value of areas, to design ecological corridors, or to select appropriate areas for species reintroductions.

The distribution of Fasciola hepatica in Queensland, Australia, and the potential impact of introduced snail intermediate hosts

A survey was conducted to establish the distribution of the liver fluke, Fasciola hepatica, in the state of Queensland, Australia, and to evaluate the impact of the introduced snail intermediate hosts, Pseudosuccinia columella and Austropeplea viridis. Serum samples from a total of 5103 homebred cattle in 142 beef herds distributed throughout the state and 523 pooled milk samples from dairy herds from the state's major dairying regions were tested for antibodies to F. hepatica by ELISA. Snails were collected on infected properties around the limits of the F. hepatica distribution. F. hepatica infection was detected in 44 dairy herds and two beef herds. The distribution of infected herds indicates that F. hepatica is established only in southeast Queensland. The distribution there was patchy but the parasite was more widespread than suggested by an earlier survey. The predominant intermediate host species found along the northern limit of the distribution was P. columella. We conclude that the introduction of P. columella and A. viridis has not yet had a major impact on the distribution of F. hepatica in Queensland. However, the presence of P. columella, which is much more adaptable to tropical habitats than the native intermediate host, Austropeplea tomentosa, at the northern limit of the F. hepatica distribution suggests that there is potential for the parasite to expand its range.

Patterns in the distribution and abundance of female eastern king prawns, Melicertus plebejus (Hess, 1865), capable of spawning and reproductive potential in waters off

Linear mixed models were used to test the null hypothesis that there were no differences between seasons and locations in the reproductive potential of female eastern king prawns, Melicertus plebejus along the east coast of Australia. Three samples were collected in each season between autumn 1991 and winter 1992 (inclusive). Females capable of spawning were found at all locations but proportions were greater in lower than higher latitudes. Females capable of spawning were not found at the southern (highest latitude) most location in all seasons. There was a significant interaction in reproductive potential between seasons and locations suggesting that patterns among seasons differed between locations and vice versa. Reproductive potential was greatest amongst the northern (lower latitudes) most locations and was greatest in autumn at these locations. Seasonal patterns were less pronounced further south (higher latitudes). The length composition of females in catches differed between locations with more larger prawns found in samples from northern locations. The challenge that remains is to quantify the oceanic sources of larvae that contribute to recruitment in each nursery area and the estuarine sources of juveniles that contribute adults back to the effective spawning stock. Maintaining the effective spawning stock and important nursery areas are crucial to the sustainability of this resource.

The potential geographic distribution of the invasive weed Senna obtusifolia in Australia

Senna obtusifolia (sicklepod) is an invasive weed of northern Australia, where it significantly impacts agricultural productivity and alters natural ecosystem structure and function. Although currently restricted to northern regions, the potential for S. obtusifolia to spread south is not known. Using the eco-climatic model CLIMEX, this study simulated the potential geographic distribution of S. obtusifolia in Australia under two scenarios. Model parameters for both scenarios were derived from the distribution of S. obtusifolia throughout North and Central America. The first scenario used these base model parameters to predict the distribution of S. obtusifolia in Australia, whilst the second model predicted the distribution of a cold susceptible S. obtusifolia ecotype that is reported to occur in the USA. Both models predicted the potential for an extensive S. obtusifolia distribution, with the first model indicating suitable climatic conditions occurring predominantly in coastal regions from the Northern Territory, to far north Queensland and into northern Victoria. The cold susceptible ecotype displayed a comparatively reduced distribution in the southern parts of Australia, where inappropriate temperatures, a lack of thermal accumulation and cold stress restrict the invasion south to the coastal regions of central New South Wales. The extent of the predicted distribution of both ecotypes of S. obtusifolia reinforces the need for strategic management at a national scale.

Taxonomy, distribution and ecology of Zoysia macrantha desv., an Australian native species with turf breeding potential

Only three of the 11 species in the genus Zoysia Willd. have thus far contributed to commercially available turfgrass varieties. One of the neglected taxa is Z. macrantha Desv., an Australian native species further divided into two subspecies. The coarser Z. macrantha subsp. macrantha occurs on sand dunes, headlands and tidal areas along eastern and southeastern coasts from about 23 to 38°S latitude. The shorter, denser-growing Z. macrantha subsp. walshii M.E. Nightingale is found on the southern mainland (South Australia and Victoria from longitude 137° to 148°E and at latitudes higher than 36°S), adjacent offshore islands, and northern, eastern and central Tasmania to 43°S growing on the edges of coastal, sub-coastal and even inland salt lakes, in riverine environments, and from moist grassy depressions (both coastal and inland) to rocky headlands. The latter subspecies has the more discontinuous and specialised distribution, largely determined by the need for an appropriate level of peat, clay or silt in the soil to maintain adequate moisture during the dry summers in southern Australia while at the same time avoiding anything more than temporary waterlogging. It grows on low fertility soils ranging from strongly acid to neutral or mildly alkaline, and is often very closely grazed by marsupials. Both subspecies are salt and drought tolerant, but not notably shade tolerant. Their potential to add greater drought tolerance in particular to the Asian Zoysia material in current use through future breeding programs is discussed.

Potential and electric field distribution in a ceramic disc insulator string with faulty insulators

Ceramic/Porcelain suspension disc insulators are widely used in power systems to provide electrical insulation and mechanically support for high-voltage transmission lines. These insulators are subjected to a variety of stresses, including mechanical, electrical and environmental. These stresses act in unison. The exact nature and magnitude of these stresses vary significantly and depends on insulator design, application and its location. Due to various reasons the insulator disc can lose its electrical insulation properties without any noticeable mechanical failure. Such a condition while difficult to recognize, can enhance the stress on remaining healthy insulator discs in the string further may lead to a flashover. To understand the stress enhancement due to faulty discs in a string, attempt has been made to simulate the potential and electric field profiles for various disc insulators presently used in the country. The results of potential and electric filed stress obtained for normal and strings with faulty insulator discs are presented.