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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS2017

Conservation, biodiversity and infectious disease: scientific evidence and policy implications

Habitat destruction and infectious disease are dual threats to nature and people. The potential to simultaneously advance conservation and human health has attracted considerable scientific and popular interest; in particular, many authors have justified conservation action by pointing out potential public health benefits . One major focus of this debate—that biodiversity conservation often decreases infectious disease transmission via the dilution effect—remains contentious. Studies that test for a dilution effect often find a negative association between a diversity metric and a disease risk metric, but how such associations should inform conservation policy remains unclear for several reasons. For one, diversity and infection risk have many definitions, making it possible to identify measures that conform to expectations. Furthermore, the premise that habitat destruction consistently reduces biodiversity is in question, and disturbance or conservation can affect disease in many ways other than through biodiversity change. To date, few studies have examined the broader set of mechanisms by which anthropogenic disturbance or conservation might increase or decrease infectious disease risk to human populations. Due to interconnections between biodiversity change, economics and human behaviour, moving from ecological theory to policy action requires understanding how social and economic factors affect conservation. This Theme Issue arose from a meeting aimed at synthesizing current theory and data on ‘biodiversity, conservation and infectious disease’ (4–6 May 2015). Ecologists, evolutionary biologists, economists, epidemiologists, veterinary scientists, public health professionals, and conservation biologists from around the world discussed the latest research on the ecological and socio-economic links between conservation, biodiversity and infectious disease, and the open questions and controversies in these areas. By combining ecological understanding with insights from the social and economic sciences, the papers in this Theme Issue address the complex relationships, patterns and ecological mechanisms that influence conservation, infectious disease, and the policy options available to protect nature and human health.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2025

A transdisciplinary approach to growing an applied science of cultural evolution for a sustainable future

Addressing sustainability challenges requires an integrative approach that bridges scientific research with practical application. The field of cultural evolution (CE) offers a perspective that may guide transitions and cultural transformations for a sustainable future. However, there have been few efforts to apply this field to sustainability challenges. This study explores how CE can inform sustainability practices through mechanisms of social learning, processes of cultural adaptation and conditions that promote cooperative governance. Through a two-phase research design—comprising online discussions with professionals from six domains, and an international workshop—we examined the perceived benefits, challenges and opportunities for applying CE in real-world contexts. Our findings indicate that professionals recognize CE’s potential to enhance knowledge dissemination, foster adaptation to social–ecological changes, improve governance structures and generate cooperation. However, barriers such as complex terminology, unfamiliarity with CE, the lack of clear, context-specific evidence of added value and competition with existing frameworks hinder its application. To overcome these challenges, we propose simplifying CE concepts, demonstrating its unique contributions, and continuing to foster co-production with practitioners to refine its applicability. This study is an initial step in building an applied science of CE that can support sustainability transformations across diverse domains.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B ↗
USGS2025

Foundational principles of an applied cultural evolutionary science for natural resource management and conservation

Culture, as the filter through which people view the world and a key determinant of human behaviour, is central to the practice of natural resource management and conservation. Conservation is intended to moderate the impacts of human cultural modification of the environment, exists as an endeavour because it is culturally valued, and acts largely through policies to encourage or discourage targeted human behaviours. However, culture is not static; as organisms and ecologies evolve, so too does culture exist as a dynamic, interconnected, coevolving element of the social–ecological systems in which management action is situated and implemented. Cultural evolution (CE) offers a valuable theoretical contribution to the scientific understanding of culture, cultural diversity and culture change and has the potential to be harnessed in the applied research and practice of conservation social science. We illustrate the essential principles necessary to grow an applied science of CE for natural resource management and conservation, and identify opportunities for CE to provide valuable information for science-based decision making and help conservation institutions and organizations adapt to the ongoing challenges posed by culture change. This transdisciplinary integration can contribute to improved outcomes across conservation objectives and build more resilient, sustainable social–ecological systems.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B ↗
USGS2005

Climate science and famine early warning

Food security assessment in sub-Saharan Africa requires simultaneous consideration of multiple socio-economic and environmental variables. Early identification of populations at risk enables timely and appropriate action. Since large and widely dispersed populations depend on rainfed agriculture and pastoralism, climate monitoring and forecasting are important inputs to food security analysis. Satellite rainfall estimates (RFE) fill in gaps in station observations, and serve as input to drought index maps and crop water balance models. Gridded rainfall time-series give historical context, and provide a basis for quantitative interpretation of seasonal precipitation forecasts. RFE are also used to characterize flood hazards, in both simple indices and stream flow models. In the future, many African countries are likely to see negative impacts on subsistence agriculture due to the effects of global warming. Increased climate variability is forecast, with more frequent extreme events. Ethiopia requires special attention. Already facing a food security emergency, troubling persistent dryness has been observed in some areas, associated with a positive trend in Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures. Increased African capacity for rainfall observation, forecasting, data management and modelling applications is urgently needed. Managing climate change and increased climate variability require these fundamental technical capacities if creative coping strategies are to be devised.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS1979

Geochemical surveys in the United States in relation to health.

Geochemical surveys in relation to health may be classified as having one, two or three dimensions. One-dimensional surveys examine relations between concentrations of elements such as Pb in soils and other media and burdens of the same elements in humans, at a given time. The spatial distributions of element concentrations are not investigated. The primary objective of two-dimensional surveys is to map the distributions of element concentrations, commonly according to stratified random sampling designs based on either conceptual landscape units or artificial sampling strata, but systematic sampling intervals have also been used. Political units have defined sample areas that coincide with the units used to accumulate epidemiological data. Element concentrations affected by point sources have also been mapped. Background values, location of natural or technological anomalies and the geographic scale of variation for several elements often are determined. Three-dimensional surveys result when two-dimensional surveys are repeated to detect environmental changes. -Author

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2007

Variation in maternal effects and embryonic development rates among passerine species

Embryonic development rates are reflected by the length of incubation period in birds, and these vary substantially among species within and among geographical regions. The incubation periods are consistently shorter in North America (Arizona study site) than in tropical (Venezuela) and subtropical (Argentina) South America based on the study of 83 passerine species in 17 clades. Parents, mothers in particular, may influence incubation periods and resulting offspring quality through proximate pathways, while variation in maternal strategies among species can result from selection by adult and offspring mortality. Parents of long-lived species, as is common in the tropics and subtropics, may be under selection to minimize costs to themselves during incubation. Indeed, time spent incubating is often lower in the tropical and subtropical species than the related north temperate species, causing cooler average egg temperatures in the southern regions. Decreased egg temperatures result in longer incubation periods and reflect a cost imposed on offspring by parents because energy cost to the embryo and risk of offspring predation are both increased. Mothers may adjust egg size and constituents as a means to partially offset such costs. For example, reduced androgen concentrations in egg yolks may slow development rates, but may enhance offspring quality through physiological trade-offs that may be particularly beneficial in longer-lived species, as in the tropics and subtropics. We provide initial data to show that yolks of tropical birds contain substantially lower concentrations of growth-promoting androgens than north temperate relatives. Thus, maternal (and parental) effects on embryonic development rates may include contrasting and complementary proximate influences on offspring quality and deserve further field study among species. ?? 2007 The Royal Society.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2008

Molecular and morphological analysis of the critically endangered Fijian iguanas reveals cryptic diversity and a complex biogeographic history

The Pacific iguanas of the Fijian and Tongan archipelagos are a biogeographic enigma in that their closest relatives are found only in the New World. They currently comprise two genera and four species of extinct and extant taxa. The two extant species, Brachylophus fasciatus from Fiji, Tonga, and Vanuatu and Brachylophus vitiensis from western Fiji, are of considerable conservation concern with B. vitiensis listed as critically endangered. A recent molecular study has shown that Brachylophus comprised three evolutionarily significant units. To test these conclusions and to reevaluate the phylogenetic and biogeographic relationships within Brachylophus, we generated an mtDNA dataset consisting of 1462 base pairs for 61 individuals from 13 islands, representing both Brachylophus species. Unweighted parsimony analyses and Bayesian analyses produced a well-resolved phylogenetic hypothesis supported by high bootstrap values and posterior probabilities within Brachylophus. Our data reject the monophyly of specimens previously believed to comprise B. fasciatus. Instead, our data demonstrate that living Brachylophus comprise three robust and well-supported clades that do not correspond to current taxonomy. One of these clades comprises B. fasciatus from the Lau group of Fiji and Tonga (type locality for B. fasciatus), while a second comprises putative B. fasciatus from the central regions of Fiji, which we refer to here as B. n. sp. Animals in this clade form the sister group to B. vitiensis rather than other B. fasciatus. We herein describe this clade as a new species of Brachylophus based on molecular and morphological data. With only one exception, every island is home to one or more unique haplotypes. We discuss alternative biogeographic hypotheses to explain their distribution in the Pacific and the difficulties of distinguishing these. Together, our molecular and taxonomic results have important implications for future conservation initiatives for the Pacific iguanas. ?? 2008 The Royal Society.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2009

Parasites reduce food web robustness because they are sensitive to secondary extinction as illustrated by an invasive estuarine snail

A robust food web is one in which few secondary extinctions occur after removing species. We investigated how parasites affected the robustness of the Carpinteria Salt Marsh food web by conducting random species removals and a hypothetical, but plausible, species invasion. Parasites were much more likely than free-living species to suffer secondary extinctions following the removal of a free-living species from the food web. For this reason, the food web was less robust with the inclusion of parasites. Removal of the horn snail, Cerithidea californica , resulted in a disproportionate number of secondary parasite extinctions. The exotic Japanese mud snail, Batillaria attramentaria , is the ecological analogue of the native California horn snail and can completely replace it following invasion. Owing to the similarities between the two snail species, the invasion had no effect on predator–prey interactions. However, because the native snail is host for 17 host-specific parasites, and the invader is host to only one, comparison of a food web that includes parasites showed significant effects of invasion on the native community. The hypothetical invasion also significantly reduced the connectance of the web because the loss of 17 native trematode species eliminated many links.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2009

The assembly, collapse and restoration of food webs

Darwin chose the metaphor of a 'tangled bank' to conclude the 'Origin of species'. Two centuries after Darwin's birth, we are still untangling the complex ecological networks he has pondered. In particular, studies of food webs provide important insights into how natural ecosystems function (Pascual & Dunne 2005). Although the nonlinear interactions between many species creates challenges of scale, resolution of data and significant computational constraints, the last 10 years have seen significant advances built on the earlier classic studies of Cohen, May, Pimm, Polis, Lawton and Yodzis (May 1974; Cohen 1978; Pimm 1982; Briand & Cohen 1984, 1987; Yodzis 1989; Cohen et al. 1990; Pimm et al. 1991; Yodzis & Innes 1992; Yodzis 1998). These gains stem from advances in computing power and the collation of more comprehensive data from a broader array of empirical food webs.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2010

Global positioning system and associated technologies in animal behaviour and ecological research

Biologists can equip animals with global positioning system (GPS) technology to obtain accurate (less than or equal to 30 m) locations that can be combined with sensor data to study animal behaviour and ecology. We provide the background of GPS techniques that have been used to gather data for wildlife studies. We review how GPS has been integrated into functional systems with data storage, data transfer, power supplies, packaging and sensor technologies to collect temperature, activity, proximity and mortality data from terrestrial species and birds. GPS 'rapid fixing' technologies combined with sensors provide location, dive frequency and duration profiles, and underwater acoustic information for the study of marine species. We examine how these rapid fixing technologies may be applied to terrestrial and avian applications. We discuss positional data quality and the capability for high-frequency sampling associated with GPS locations. We present alternatives for storing and retrieving data by using dataloggers (biologging), radio-frequency download systems (e.g. very high frequency, spread spectrum), integration of GPS with other satellite systems (e.g. Argos, Globalstar) and potential new data recovery technologies (e.g. network nodes). GPS is one component among many rapidly evolving technologies. Therefore, we recommend that users and suppliers interact to ensure the availability of appropriate equipment to meet animal research objectives.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2010

Intra- and interspecific facilitation in mangroves may increase resilience to climate change threats

Mangroves are intertidal ecosystems that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. At the low tidal limits of their range, they face swamping by rising sea levels; at the high tidal limits, they face increasing stress from desiccation and high salinity. Facilitation theory may help guide mangrove management and restoration in the face of these threats by suggesting how and when positive intra- and interspecific effects may occur: such effects are predicted in stressed environments such as the intertidal, but have yet to be shown among mangroves. Here, we report the results of a series of experiments at low and high tidal sites examining the effects of mangrove density and species mix on seedling survival and recruitment, and on the ability of mangroves to trap sediment and cause surface elevation change. Increasing density significantly increased the survival of seedlings of two different species at both high and low tidal sites, and enhanced sediment accretion and elevation at the low tidal site. Including Avicennia marina in species mixes enhanced total biomass at a degraded high tidal site. Increasing biomass led to changed microenvironments that allowed the recruitment and survival of different mangrove species, particularly Ceriops tagal .

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2010

The annual cycles of phytoplankton biomass

Terrestrial plants are powerful climate sentinels because their annual cycles of growth, reproduction and senescence are finely tuned to the annual climate cycle having a period of one year. Consistency in the seasonal phasing of terrestrial plant activity provides a relatively low-noise background from which phenological shifts can be detected and attributed to climate change. Here, we ask whether phytoplankton biomass also fluctuates over a consistent annual cycle in lake, estuarine-coastal and ocean ecosystems and whether there is a characteristic phenology of phytoplankton as a consistent phase and amplitude of variability. We compiled 125 time series of phytoplankton biomass (chloro-phyll a concentration) from temperate and subtropical zones and used wavelet analysis to extract their dominant periods of variability and the recurrence strength at those periods. Fewer than half (48%) of the series had a dominant 12-month period of variability, commonly expressed as the canonical spring-bloom pattern. About 20 per cent had a dominant six-month period of variability, commonly expressed as the spring and autumn or winter and summer blooms of temperate lakes and oceans. These annual patterns varied in recurrence strength across sites, and did not persist over the full series duration at some sites. About a third of the series had no component of variability at either the six-or 12-month period, reflecting a series of irregular pulses of biomass. These findings show that there is high variability of annual phytoplankton cycles across ecosystems, and that climate-driven annual cycles can be obscured by other drivers of population variability, including human disturbance, aperiodic weather events and strong trophic coupling between phytoplankton and their consumers. Regulation of phytoplankton biomass by multiple processes operating at multiple time scales adds complexity to the challenge of detecting climate-driven trends in aquatic ecosystems where the noise to signal ratio is high.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2010

Detecting temporal trends in species assemblages with bootstrapping procedures and hierarchical models

Quantifying patterns of temporal trends in species assemblages is an important analytical challenge in community ecology. We describe methods of analysis that can be applied to a matrix of counts of individuals that is organized by species (rows) and time-ordered sampling periods (columns). We first developed a bootstrapping procedure to test the null hypothesis of random sampling from a stationary species abundance distribution with temporally varying sampling probabilities. This procedure can be modified to account for undetected species. We next developed a hierarchical model to estimate species-specific trends in abundance while accounting for species-specific probabilities of detection. We analysed two long-term datasets on stream fishes and grassland insects to demonstrate these methods. For both assemblages, the bootstrap test indicated that temporal trends in abundance were more heterogeneous than expected under the null model. We used the hierarchical model to estimate trends in abundance and identified sets of species in each assemblage that were steadily increasing, decreasing or remaining constant in abundance over more than a decade of standardized annual surveys. Our methods of analysis are broadly applicable to other ecological datasets, and they represent an advance over most existing procedures, which do not incorporate effects of incomplete sampling and imperfect detection.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2012

Parasite invasion following host reintroduction: a case of Yellowstone’s wolves

Wildlife reintroductions select or treat individuals for good health with the expectation that these individuals will fare better than infected animals. However, these individuals, new to their environment, may also be particularly susceptible to circulating infections and this may result in high morbidity and mortality, potentially jeopardizing the goals of recovery. Here, using the reintroduction of the grey wolf (Canis lupus) into Yellowstone National Park as a case study, we address the question of how parasites invade a reintroduced population and consider the impact of these invasions on population performance. We find that several viral parasites rapidly invaded the population inside the park, likely via spillover from resident canid species, and we contrast these with the slower invasion of sarcoptic mange, caused by the mite Sarcoptes scabiei. The spatio-temporal patterns of mange invasion were largely consistent with patterns of host connectivity and density, and we demonstrate that the area of highest resource quality, supporting the greatest density of wolves, is also the region that appears most susceptible to repeated disease invasion and parasite-induced declines. The success of wolf reintroduction appears not to have been jeopardized by infectious disease, but now shows signs of regulation or limitation modulated by parasites.

Wyoming↗
USGS2012

Biodiversity loss decreases parasite diversity: theory and patterns

Past models have suggested host–parasite coextinction could lead to linear, or concave down relationships between free-living species richness and parasite richness. I explored several models for the relationship between parasite richness and biodiversity loss. Life cycle complexity, low generality of parasites and sensitivity of hosts reduced the robustness of parasite species to the loss of free-living species diversity. Food-web complexity and the ordering of extinctions altered these relationships in unpredictable ways. Each disassembly of a food web resulted in a unique relationship between parasite richness and the richness of free-living species, because the extinction trajectory of parasites was sensitive to the order of extinctions of free-living species. However, the average of many disassemblies tended to approximate an analytical model. Parasites of specialist hosts and hosts higher on food chains were more likely to go extinct in food-web models. Furthermore, correlated extinctions between hosts and parasites (e.g. if parasites share a host with a specialist predator) led to steeper declines in parasite richness with biodiversity loss. In empirical food webs with random removals of free-living species, the relationship between free-living species richness and parasite richness was, on average, quasi-linear, suggesting biodiversity loss reduces parasite diversity more than previously thought.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2013

Biological nitrogen fixation: rates, patterns and ecological controls in terrestrial ecosystems

New techniques have identified a wide range of organisms with the capacity to carry out biological nitrogen fixation (BNF)—greatly expanding our appreciation of the diversity and ubiquity of N fixers—but our understanding of the rates and controls of BNF at ecosystem and global scales has not advanced at the same pace. Nevertheless, determining rates and controls of BNF is crucial to placing anthropogenic changes to the N cycle in context, and to understanding, predicting and managing many aspects of global environmental change. Here, we estimate terrestrial BNF for a pre-industrial world by combining information on N fluxes with 15 N relative abundance data for terrestrial ecosystems. Our estimate is that pre-industrial N fixation was 58 (range of 40–100) Tg N fixed yr −1 ; adding conservative assumptions for geological N reduces our best estimate to 44 Tg N yr −1 . This approach yields substantially lower estimates than most recent calculations; it suggests that the magnitude of human alternation of the N cycle is substantially larger than has been assumed.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗
USGS2016

Multiscale perspectives of fire, climate and humans in western North America and the Jemez Mountains, USA

Interannual climate variations have been important drivers of wildfire occurrence in ponderosa pine forests across western North America for at least 400 years, but at finer scales of mountain ranges and landscapes human land uses sometimes over-rode climate influences. We reconstruct and analyse effects of high human population densities in forests of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico from ca 1300 CE to Present. Prior to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, human land uses reduced the occurrence of widespread fires while simultaneously adding more ignitions resulting in many small-extent fires. During the 18th and 19th centuries, wet/dry oscillations and their effects on fuels dynamics controlled widespread fire occurrence. In the late 19th century, intensive livestock grazing disrupted fuels continuity and fire spread and then active fire suppression maintained the absence of widespread surface fires during most of the 20th century. The abundance and continuity of fuels is the most important controlling variable in fire regimes of these semi-arid forests. Reduction of widespread fires owing to reduction of fuel continuity emerges as a hallmark of extensive human impacts on past forests and fire regimes.

New Mexico↗
USGS2016

At the nexus of fire, water and society

The societal risks of water scarcity and water-quality impairment have received considerable attention, evidenced by recent analyses of these topics by the 2030 Water Resources Group, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. What are the effects of fire on the predicted water scarcity and declines in water quality? Drinking water supplies for humans, the emphasis of this exploration, are derived from several land cover types, including forests, grasslands and peatlands, which are vulnerable to fire. In the last two decades, fires have affected the water supply catchments of Denver (CO) and other southwestern US cities, and four major Australian cities including Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Melbourne. In the same time period, several, though not all, national, regional and global water assessments have included fire in evaluations of the risks that affect water supplies. The objective of this discussion is to explore the nexus of fire, water and society with the hope that a more explicit understanding of fire effects on water supplies will encourage the incorporation of fire into future assessments of water supplies, into the pyrogeography conceptual framework and into planning efforts directed at water resiliency.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:↗