Ecological Domains Research Articles

100 years of ecology: what are our concepts and are they useful?

AbstractOn the occasion of the Ecological Society of America's centennial, we sought to learn which ecological concepts members value in terms of their utility. This required defining “concept,” and selecting concepts from current ecology textbooks that might arguably belong to a normative set. AllESAmembers were invited to participate in an online survey in October 2014 in which they rated 70, randomly selected concepts (out of a total set of 131) in terms of utility. Alternative to rating, respondents could mark the concept as unfamiliar. Respondents were also able list concepts that were important to them that were not encountered in the survey. Fifteen percent (1324) of theESAmembership participated in the survey. Of these, 89% were addressed in North America, 62% were male, 77% held Ph.D. degrees, 67% were involved in academia through employment or as students, and about one‐half of the total were divided between community and ecosystem ecology domains of interest. The 10 highest ranked concepts (in descending order) for utility were scales (small, local, regional, global, etc.), ecosystem, habitat, species, disturbance/perturbation, organism, population, community, competition, and species life history. The 10 lowest ranked concepts (in descending order) for utility were Lotka‐Volterra predator–prey/competition models, Allee effect, nutrient spiraling, character displacement, doubling time, climax, Hardy‐Weinberg equation, red queen hypothesis, chemoautotroph/chemoautotrophy, and mimicry. Respondents entered 2800 terms not encountered in the survey. After parsing for concepts missed due to the survey's random presentation process, for semantic redundancy and for terms deemed non‐concepts, 119 candidate concepts emerged. Many of these deserve consideration for inclusion in a normative set and introduction in textbooks. This research provides a well‐considered definition of “concept,” a basis for defining a normative set of concepts expected to be known to all ecologists, and a measure of familiarity but, more importantly, a measure of usage by contemporary ecologists who were members ofESA. These results help us to understand ourselves and our science, to better teach ecology, to guide the initiatives of the collective ecological community, and to further explore the extent and intellectual structure of the principal concepts by which ecologists pursue their work.

Extending the multi-criteria decision making method DEX with numeric attributes, value distributions and relational models

DEX is a qualitative multi-criteria decision analysis method. The method supports decision makers in making complex decisions based on multiple, possibly conflicting, attributes. The attributes in DEX have qualitative value scales and are structured hierarchically. The hierarchical topology allows for decomposition of the decision problem into simpler sub-problems. In DEX, alternatives are described with qualitative values, taken from the scales of corresponding input attributes in the hierarchy. The evaluation of alternatives is performed in a bottom-up way, utilizing aggregation functions, which are defined for every aggregated attribute in the form of decision rules. DEX has been used in numerous practical applications—from everyday decision problems to solving decision problems in the financial and ecological domains. Based on experience, we identified the need for three major methodological extensions to DEX: introducing numeric attributes, the probabilistic and fuzzy aggregation of values and relational models. These extensions were proposed by users of the existing method and by the new demands of complex decision problems, which require advanced decision making approaches. In this paper, we introduce these three extensions by describing the extensions formally, justifying their contributions to the decision making process and illustrating them on a didactic example, which is followed throughout the paper.

The pygidial gland secretion of the forest caterpillar hunter, Calosoma (Calosoma) sycophanta: the antimicrobial properties against human pathogens.

Recently, various insect secretions have been tested as possible antimicrobial agents. In beetles, these secretions are essentially products of various exocrine glands, of which particular emphasis is on pygidial glands that are common for the suborder Adephaga. The antimicrobial potential of the pygidial gland secretion isolated from the adults of Calosoma sycophanta against human pathogens has been tested and compared with the potential of other carabid species, particularly within the tribe Carabini. The antimicrobial assay includes a microdilution method which was applied in order to determine the minimal inhibitory, minimal fungicidal and minimal bactericidal concentrations. It has been tested the effect of the secretion against eight strains of fungal and eight strains of bacterial species. The secretion sample of the tested carabid species has shown statistically significant antifungal effect against all strains of treated micromycetes, the highest in comparison with previously tested carabids (Carabus spp., Laemostenus punctatus and Abax parallelepipedus). Aspergillus versicolor proved to be the most sensitive micromycete, while the remaining seven fungal strains have shown the same level of sensibility. In comparison with commercial mycotics ketoconazole and bifonazole, applied as positive controls, the tested secretion showed much higher antifungal activity for all fungal strains. Antibacterial effect has been manifested only against one bacterial strain (Escherichia coli), contrary to other previously studied carabid species. These observations might have a significant impact on the ecological domain and possible purpose in biomedical studies and applications in the future. Additionally, morpho-histology of the pygidial glands of C. sycophanta is investigated and discussed.

Cautionary tales from the microbiome: Finding what is real and reproducible

Statement of the Problem: Commonly-used methods of analyzing microbiome or RNA-seq datasets can be misleading and all the available information in a consistent manner are not in use. These results in many analyses being dominated by either the most abundant, or the rarest features: In fact, it is often the case that the most abundant taxa dominate multivariate outputs, and the rarest taxa dominate univariate outputs in the same dataset. Furthermore, these datasets have extraordinary properties that make the use of correlation and network analysis problematic. Methodology and Theoretical Orientation: Data collected using high throughput sequencing (HTS) methods are sequence reads mapped to genomic intervals, and are commonly analyzed as either normalized count data or relative abundance data. One reason for these normalizations is to attempt to compensate for the problem that the sequencing instrument imposes an upper bound on the number of sequence reads. Positive data with an arbitrary bound are compositional data and are subject to the problem of spurious correlation. Thus, ordination, clustering and network analysis become unreliable. A second problem is that the data are sparse: i.e., contain many 0 values. A third problem is that the largest measurement error is at the low count margins in these datasets. Conclusion & Significance: We use microbiome datasets to show how Bayesian estimation combined with compositional data approaches that examine the ratios between taxa give robust insights into the structure and function of microbial communities. I will present example datasets drawn from the human and ecological domains and show that ordination, differential abundance and correlation can be interpreted in an internally consistent manner that provides reproducible insights.

Using a social ecological model to explore upstream and downstream solutions to rural food access for the elderly

AbstractA social ecological model is applied to the secondary analysis of qualitative data to study the impact of place on rural food access for older adults in West Virginia. The use of a social-ecological model to review the senior’s coded narratives provided a clearer picture of higher impact, upstream levers to address food security for older adults in a rural region. The elderly have restricted access to food in rural West Virginia because of an indirect relationship with place that acts through the social ecological domains of the built environment, macrosocial factors, stressors, the natural environment, and social support. The results of this analysis add to theories on upstream policy sectors that may contribute to food security and the quality of dietary intake for older adults in rural places. As senior populations increase the need for greater understanding of the place-based causal pathways for rural food insecurity and poor nutrition in older adults will become more important for program and...

Socio-Demographic, Social-Cognitive, Health-Related and Physical Environmental Variables Associated with Context-Specific Sitting Time in Belgian Adolescents: A One-Year Follow-Up Study.

IntroductionMore knowledge is warranted about multilevel ecological variables associated with context-specific sitting time among adolescents. The present study explored cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of ecological domains of sedentary behaviour, including socio-demographic, social-cognitive, health-related and physical-environmental variables with sitting during TV viewing, computer use, electronic gaming and motorized transport among adolescents.MethodsFor this longitudinal study, a sample of Belgian adolescents completed questionnaires at school on context-specific sitting time and associated ecological variables. At baseline, complete data were gathered from 513 adolescents (15.0±1.7 years). At one-year follow-up, complete data of 340 participants were available (retention rate: 66.3%). Multilevel linear regression analyses were conducted to explore cross-sectional correlates (baseline variables) and longitudinal predictors (change scores variables) of context-specific sitting time.ResultsSocial-cognitive correlates/predictors were most frequently associated with context-specific sitting time. Longitudinal analyses revealed that increases over time in considering it pleasant to watch TV (p < .001), in perceiving TV watching as a way to relax (p < .05), in TV time of parents/care givers (p < .01) and in TV time of siblings (p < .001) were associated with more sitting during TV viewing at follow-up. Increases over time in considering it pleasant to use a computer in leisure time (p < .01) and in the computer time of siblings (p < .001) were associated with more sitting during computer use at follow-up. None of the changes in potential predictors were significantly related to changes in sitting during motorized transport or during electronic gaming.ConclusionsFuture intervention studies aiming to decrease TV viewing and computer use should acknowledge the importance of the behaviour of siblings and the pleasure adolescents experience during these screen-related behaviours. In addition, more time parents or care givers spent sitting may lead to more sitting during TV viewing of the adolescents, so that a family-based approach may be preferable for interventions. Experimental study designs are warranted to confirm the present findings.

The Arctic Marine Pulses Model: linking annual oceanographic processes to contiguous ecological domains in the Pacific Arctic

The Pacific Arctic marine ecosystem extends from the northern Bering Sea, across the Chukchi and into the East Siberian and Beaufort seas. Food webs in this ecosystem are short, a simplicity that belies the biophysical complexity underlying trophic linkages from primary production to humans. Existing advective and pelagic-benthic coupling models describe processes that connect certain aspects of marine food webs, but do not offer a comprehensive approach to understanding the Pacific Arctic ecosystem. In the course of the Synthesis of Arctic Research (SOAR) project, the Arctic Marine Pulses (AMP) model was developed that depicts seasonal biophysical ‘pulses’ across a latitudinal gradient by linking processes in four previously-defined contiguous ecological domains, including the: (i) Pacific Arctic domain; (ii) Seasonal Ice Zone domain; (iii) the Marginal domain (i.e., the shelf break and slope); and (iv) Riverine Coastal domain. Some of the biophysical processes included in the AMP model, such as pelagic-benthic coupling on the broad shelves of the northern Bering and Chukchi seas and advection and upwelling of zooplankton along the western Beaufort shelf (i.e. the krill trap), have been the focus of long-term studies. Other aspects such as biological processes associated with shifts in seasonal sea-ice phenology and trophic responses to riverine outflow have received less attention. The AMP model provides an annual spatiotemporal framework to guide research on dynamic ecosystem processes during the recent period of rapid biophysical changes in the Pacific Arctic. The model aims to encourage integrated research to track seasonal sea-ice and current-flow dynamics, coincident with variability in nutrients, benthic and pelagic production, and upper-trophic species occurrence to provide a foundation for the development of predictive human-inclusive ecosystem models for the Pacific Arctic region. We suggest that the AMP model, with its focus on phenology, might facilitate communication between conventional science approaches to marine research and seasonal-cycle based indigenous knowledge of marine ecosystems. The goal of improving our understanding of the state and variability of the Pacific Arctic marine ecosystem is a shared one and we conclude with views on how the AMP model can support that goal while contributing to the development of a pan-Arctic ecosystem model.

An Expression of Multiple Values: The Relationship Between Community, Landscape and Natural Resource

To aid political and institutional decision making in the sustainable use of natural resources the value of ecological, socio-cultural and economic assets has increasingly been communicated in terms of monetary units. Despite reliance upon natural resources, the impact of human activities has now reached a stage where cumulative losses are forcing society to re-appraise the evaluation process and how to better incorporate these values in to the decision-making process. This paper examines the attributes of value held by natural resources within ecological, socio-cultural and economic value domains from the perspective of a rural UK community. Here we reflect upon the continued primacy of monetary valuation of natural resource using two approaches, a scaled preference-based value typology and a place-based map measure. We demonstrate that the societal relationships which inform the evaluation of natural resources are both multi-faceted and hierarchical. Moreover, whilst aware of the utilitarian character of society’s relationship with natural resource, the societal value-for-natural-resource relationship is primarily expressed using social-ecological qualities. These results add weight to the call for a new approach towards natural resource evaluation and how these values contribute to the sustainability agenda. New methods of evaluation must adopt multiple values that extend beyond a solely economic-based commodification concern to encompass the human relationship with the resource itself. Wherein, a multi-faceted approach to attributing value to natural resource, set within an experiential framework, can provide a focal point for discussion and the decision-making process.

Environmental Protection Tools in Agricultural Management Works

Land consolidation is a fundamental instrument for agricultural management. It facilitates comprehensive changes in the agricultural, social, and ecological domains. Consolidation and post-consolidation development-related investments are an opportunity to improve living conditions in rural areas, and simultaneously ensure its positive impact on the environment. One of the primary goals of consolidation, directly specified in the Act on land consolidation, is to improve farming conditions. In Poland, consolidation is possible due to EU funds: RDP 2007-2013 and RDP 2014-2020. In order for individual villages to be granted EU funds for consolidation and post-consolidation development under the Rural Development Programme 2014-2020, their consolidation has to implement actions with positive impact on the environment and the landscape. The goal of this paper is to analyse documentation in the form of assumptions for a land consolidation project enclosed to an RDP 2014-2020 grant application and project information sheets as the basis for environmental impact assessment in the context of detailed presentation of environmental protection solutions that ensure a positive impact of the project on the environment and landscape. The detailed study involved 9 villages in the Malopolskie Voivodeship, which applied for EU grants for land consolidation in the current financial perspective. The paper specifies the existing state of the analysed villages as regards the natural environment, lists agricultural management instruments that have a positive impact on the environment, and demonstrates that planning of actions aimed at environmental protection is a necessary element of assumptions for land consolidation projects.

Boosting the use of spectral heterogeneity in the impact assessment of agricultural land use on biodiversity

No consensus has been yet achieved among Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) practitioners on how to assess the impact on biodiversity due to land uses and land use changes, in particular with regard to agricultural areas. In the domain of nature conservation and landscape ecology, spectral heterogeneity (SH) derived from remotely sensed imagery is considered a viable proxy for species diversity detection. The assessment rationale is based on the ‘spectral variation hypothesis’: the higher the spectral variability, the higher the ecological heterogeneity and species community diversity, occupying different niches. Our hypothesis is that SH can be effective to improve or complement current Life Cycle Impact Assessment−LCIA practice on biodiversity loss evaluation driven by land use. Hence, we aim here to explore this assumption by computing SH at a local scale of crops cultivation in Southern Alps (Trentino province, Italy), and then combining this information with land use over 30 years. We observe and analyse the relationships between land cover maps and habitat heterogeneity at different time and spatial resolutions. This allows us to argue about the robustness of SH to be a potential surrogate of environmental nuances for species variability detection in LCIA.

Using Conceptual Models and Qualitative Network Models to Advance Integrative Assessments of Marine Ecosystems

ABSTRACTThe complexity of ecosystem-based management (EBM) of natural resources has given rise to research frameworks such as integrated ecosystem assessments (IEA) that pull together large amounts of diverse information from physical, ecological, and social domains. Conceptual models are valuable tools for assimilating and simplifying this information to convey our understanding of ecosystem structure and functioning. Qualitative network models (QNMs) may allow us to conduct dynamic simulations of conceptual models to explore natural–social relationships, compare management strategies, and identify tradeoffs. We used previously developed QNM methods to perform simulations based on conceptual models of the California Current ecosystem's pelagic communities and related human activities and values. Assumptions about community structure and trophic interactions influenced the outcomes of the QNMs. In simulations where we applied unfavorable environmental conditions for production of salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.), intensive management actions only modestly mitigated declines experienced by salmon, but strongly constrained human activities. Moreover, the management actions had little effect on a human wellbeing attribute, sense of place. Sense of place was most strongly affected by a relatively small subset of all possible pair-wise interactions, although the relative influence of individual pair-wise interactions on sense of place grew more uniform as management actions were added, making it more difficult to trace effective management actions via specific mechanistic pathways. Future work will explore the importance of changing conceptual models and QNMs to represent management questions at finer spatial and temporal scales, and also examine finer representation of key ecological and social components.

Structural analysis of the drivers and barriers to forest management in the Slovak regions of Podpoľanie and Kysuce

Abstract The paper presents an application of structural analysis in search of key drivers and barriers of forest management in two Slovak regions: Podpoľanie and Kysuce. A comparison with factors identified in selected European regions is also presented. First, various relevant factors affecting forest management were selected for both regions. The selections draw on the pool of primary data (structured in-person interviews) and secondary data (qualitative analysis of national and European documents). Second, factors were grouped according to the STEEP categories (Society, Technology, Economy, Ecology, and Policy). Subsequently, factors were rigorously assessed by the regional stakeholders in participatory workshops, and their answers were analysed by structural analysis with the help of Parmenides EIDOS™ software. The results show that in both Slovak regions political, economic, and ecological factors dominated over social and technological factors. The comparison with selected European regions revealed that in the Slovak and other European regions, the Policy category dominated due to having the highest number of factors and their overall impact on forest management. In contrast, the least important societal domain was Technology in both the Slovak and other European regions. However, while stakeholders across the selected European regions perceived the Society domain as significant, stakeholders in both Slovak regions perceived the Economy and Ecology domains as more significant.

Synergistic vulnerabilities: climate variability and fire management policy increase farming challenges in southeastern Mexico

Agricultural fire for land preparation is central in the livelihoods of subsistence farmers practicing shifting cultivation. Achieving a good agricultural burn, one in which the biomass is thoroughly consumed within the chosen area, depends on specific weather conditions. Fire use decisions are also shaped by institutions that define the timing and rules for fire use but also constrain the alternatives and shape adaptive capacities. Global and regional climate changes interact with the institutional framing of fire management affecting local fire use and burn outcomes. These effects are documented and analyzed to suggest adaptations to existing governance systems. We examined subsistence farmers’ socio-ecological vulnerability in the Calakmul municipality, located in southeastern Mexico. Using interviews with farmers and government agents, as well as participatory mapping and observation of agricultural burns, we studied fire management knowledge, practices and burn outcomes. Our results describe a continuum of burn outcomes covering good agricultural burns, uncontrolled burns leading to wildfires and “malquemados” literally poorly burned areas. Malquemados represent unsuccessful combustion associated with excess moisture that results in scorched vegetation. We discuss how unexpected early rains trigger effects that cascade through space and the ecological, economic and cultural domains. We argue that fire management has been historically approached from a conservation standpoint yet agricultural fire use and wildfire prevention should also be addressed from a rural development perspective. This shift in fire management would lead to the proper inclusion of the entire array of burn outcomes in studies and policies addressing farmers’ vulnerability amplified by synergistic effects between climate variability and institutional change.

Existence of spatiotemporal patterns in the reaction–diffusion predator–prey model incorporating prey refuge

The pattern formation in reaction–diffusion system has long been the subject of interest to the researchers in the domain of mathematical ecology because of its universal existence and importance. The present investigation deals with a spatial dynamics of the Beddington–DeAngelis predator–prey model in the presence of a constant proportion of prey refuge. The model system representing boundary value problem under study is subjected to homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions. The asymptotic stability including the local and the global stability and the bifurcation as well of the unique positive homogeneous steady state of the corresponding temporal model has been analyzed. The Turing instability region in two-parameter space and the condition of diffusion-driven instability of the spatiotemporal model are investigated. Based on the appropriate numerical simulations, the present model dynamics in Turing space appears to get influenced by prey refuge while it exhibits diffusion-controlled pattern formation growth to spots, stripe-spot mixtures, labyrinthine, stripe-hole mixtures and holes replication. The results obtained appear to enrich the findings of the model system under consideration.

Ensembles of label noise filters: a ranking approach

Label noise can be a major problem in classification tasks, since most machine learning algorithms rely on data labels in their inductive process. Thereupon, various techniques for label noise identification have been investigated in the literature. The bias of each technique defines how suitable it is for each dataset. Besides, while some techniques identify a large number of examples as noisy and have a high false positive rate, others are very restrictive and therefore not able to identify all noisy examples. This paper investigates how label noise detection can be improved by using an ensemble of noise filtering techniques. These filters, individual and ensembles, are experimentally compared. Another concern in this paper is the computational cost of ensembles, once, for a particular dataset, an individual technique can have the same predictive performance as an ensemble. In this case the individual technique should be preferred. To deal with this situation, this study also proposes the use of meta-learning to recommend, for a new dataset, the best filter. An extensive experimental evaluation of the use of individual filters, ensemble filters and meta-learning was performed using public datasets with imputed label noise. The results show that ensembles of noise filters can improve noise filtering performance and that a recommendation system based on meta-learning can successfully recommend the best filtering technique for new datasets. A case study using a real dataset from the ecological niche modeling domain is also presented and evaluated, with the results validated by an expert.

Quantifying the impacts of grassland restoration on biodiversity and ecosystem services in China: A meta-analysis

Given the extent of global ecosystem degradation resulting from environmental changes and human activity, restoration efforts have increasingly focused on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Grassland, the largest terrestrial ecosystem globally and in China, has high ecological and economic value. We performed a meta-analysis to assess the impacts of grassland restoration on biodiversity and ecosystem services in China. The results showed that grassland restoration improved biodiversity by 32.44% and ecosystem services by 30.43%, although the restored grassland from degraded conditions failed to reach the level of non-degraded reference conditions for biodiversity and ecosystem services. The analysis of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the four ecological domains showed significant differences in restored grassland compared to the degraded and reference grassland. Restoration outcomes of biodiversity and ecosystem services were affected by different restoration approaches, but restoration age was not detected as significantly correlated with biodiversity and ecosystem services recovery. Biodiversity recovery, however, was positively correlated with ecosystem services recovery so far in our dataset. Despite this, these patterns require further elucidation and synthetic analyses must be conducted to assess and inform future restoration actions.

EMBEDDING CAPITAL: POLITICAL-ECONOMIC HISTORY, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE WORLD

One of the chief promises of the emerging history of capitalism is its capacity to problematize and historicize relationships between economic inequality and capital's social, political, and ecological domain. At their best, the new works creatively integrate multiple historiographic approaches. Scholars are bringing the insights of social and cultural history to business history's traditional actors and topics, providing thick descriptions of the complex social worlds of firms, investors, and bankers, while resisting rationalist, functionalist, and economistic analyses. They are also proceeding from the assumption that capitalism is not reducible to the people that historians have typically designated as capitalists. As they've shown, the fact that slaves, women, sharecroppers, clerks, and industrial laborers were, to different degrees, denied power in the building of American capitalism did not mean that they were absent from its web, or that their actions did not decisively shape its particular contours.

An ecological path model of use of violence among African American adolescents

ABSTRACTThis cross-sectional study used an ecological framework to understand the risk and protective factors associated with use of violence among African American adolescents ages 12–17 years (N = 2,328). Using data from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the authors study identified different direct paths in predicting use of violence among African American adolescents. The authors then computed a multigroup analysis to determine whether significant gender differences exist in use of violence. Path analysis results suggest micro, meso, and macro factors significantly predicted violence use. The strongest predictor of use of violence among African American youth was parental conflicts. The multigroup analysis suggests that the pathways to use of violence significantly differ between African American boys and girls. Among African American boys, the strongest predictor of increased use of violence was parental conflicts; among African American girls, it was negative peer influence. Findings suggest that all 3 ecological domains and gender differences should be accounted for when developing prevention or intervention services that target use of violence among young African Americans.

Where are Ecology and Biodiversity in Social–Ecological Systems Research? A Review of Research Methods and Applied Recommendations

AbstractUnderstanding social–ecological systems (SES) is critical for effective sustainability and biodiversity conservation initiatives. We systematically reviewed SES research to examine whether and how it integrates ecological and social domains and generates decision‐relevant recommendations. We aim to inform SES research methods and improve the relevance of SES research. Of 120 SES articles, two‐thirds included an ecological variable while all but one included a social variable. Biodiversity was a less common ecological variable than resource productivity, land cover, and abiotic measures. We found six diverse social–ecological linking methods: modeling (9%), causal loop diagrams (18%), quantitative correlations (8%), separate quantitative measures (13%), indicators (14%), and rich description (37%). Policy recommendations addressing social–ecological dynamics were more likely in articles including both ecological and social variables, suggesting the importance of research approach for policy and practice application. Further integration of ecology and biodiversity is needed to support governance, policy, and management for SES sustainability.

Potential Distribution Prediction of Medium Aroma Type of Flue-cured Tobacco Based on Ecological Niche Model

In this study, six commonly used ecological niche models including genetic algorithm for rule-set production, support vector machine, maximum entropy and ecological niche factor analysis, DOMAIN and Bioclim were evaluated for predict potential suitable areas for flue-cured tobacco with medium aroma type. The ecological factors, such as topography and climate parameters, were collected from representative sites growing flue-cured tobacco with medium aroma type. Average receiver operating characteristic curve and area under the curve are calculated to assess the prediction accuracy of these models. The comparative results showed that maximum entropy model outperformed others. The potential distribution areas for producing flue-cured tobacco with medium aroma type are identified by the best performed model.