Types Of Environmental Change Research Articles

Biodiversity and Altitudinal Variation of Dung Beetles (Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) in the Oglán Alto Watershed, Ecuadorian Amazon

Dung beetles are considered a useful taxon to describe and to monitor spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity. Tropical communities of dung beetles are usually diverse, abundant, and habitat specific; they respond quickly to many types of environmental changes. This study was carried out over 18 months, on an altitudinal gradient in the Oglán Alto watershed, located in Pastaza Province, Ecuador. A total of 10,227 individuals belonging to 59 species were collected. Food preference was analyzed and it was observed that species of coprophagous beetles are superior to necrophagous and generalists species. Tunnelers functional group was more abundant than rollers and dwellers groups, and only this group reduced its richness at higher altitudes. Six richness estimators were used for comparison between the two types of bait used (excrement and carrion). Correspondence Analysis was performed, according to the types of traps and species captured, with respect to the variation of altitudinal gradient. We concluded that the relation of altitudinal gradient and average of richness by traps is very similar among four transects sampled, showing a mixture of species of copro-necrophagous beetles associated to Amazon lowlands, with few species of foothill evergreen forest of the Ecuadorian east. It is recommended to continue studies in this type of vegetation, mainly in a higher altitudinal gradient.

Molecular Coping Mechanisms: Reprogramming tRNAs To Regulate Codon-Biased Translation of Stress Response Proteins.

As part of the classic central dogma of molecular biology, transfer RNAs (tRNAs) are integral to protein translation as the adaptor molecules that link the genetic code in messenger RNA (mRNA) to the amino acids in the growing peptide chain. tRNA function is complicated by the existence of 61 codons to specify 20 amino acids, with most amino acids coded by two or more synonymous codons. Further, there are often fewer tRNAs with unique anticodons than there are synonymous codons for an amino acid, with a single anticodon able to decode several codons by "wobbling" of the base pairs arising between the third base of the codon and the first position on the anticodon. The complications introduced by synonymous codons and wobble base pairing began to resolve in the 1960s with the discovery of dozens of chemical modifications of the ribonucleotides in tRNA, which, by analogy to the epigenome, are now collectively referred to as the epitranscriptome for not changing the genetic code inherent to all RNA sequences. tRNA modifications were found to stabilize codon-anticodon interactions, prevent misinitiation of translation, and promote translational fidelity, among other functions, with modification deficiencies causing pathological phenotypes. This led to hypotheses that modification-dependent tRNA decoding efficiencies might play regulatory roles in cells. However, it was only with the advent of systems biology and convergent "omic" technologies that the higher level function of synonymous codons and tRNA modifications began to emerge.Here, we describe our laboratories' discovery of tRNA reprogramming and codon-biased translation as a mechanism linking tRNA modifications and synonymous codon usage to regulation of gene expression at the level of translation. Taking a historical approach, we recount how we discovered that the 8-10 modifications in each tRNA molecule undergo unique reprogramming in response to cellular stresses to promote translation of mRNA transcripts with unique codon usage patterns. These modification tunable transcripts (MoTTs) are enriched with specific codons that are differentially decoded by modified tRNAs and that fall into functional families of genes encoding proteins necessary to survive the specific stress. By developing and applying systems-level technologies, we showed that cells lacking specific tRNA modifications are sensitized to certain cellular stresses by mistranslation of proteins, disruption of mitochondrial function, and failure to translate critical stress response proteins. In essence, tRNA reprogramming serves as a cellular coping strategy, enabling rapid translation of proteins required for stress-specific cell response programs. Notably, this phenomenon has now been characterized in all organisms from viruses to humans and in response to all types of environmental changes. We also elaborate on recent findings that cancer cells hijack this mechanism to promote their own growth, metastasis, and chemotherapeutic resistance. We close by discussing how understanding of codon-biased translation in various systems can be exploited to develop new therapeutics and biomanufacturing processes.

Nonlinear eco-evolutionary games with global environmental fluctuations and local environmental feedbacks.

Environmental changes play a critical role in determining the evolution of social dilemmas in many natural or social systems. Generally, the environmental changes include two prominent aspects: the global time-dependent fluctuations and the local strategy-dependent feedbacks. However, the impacts of these two types of environmental changes have only been studied separately, a complete picture of the environmental effects exerted by the combination of these two aspects remains unclear. Here we develop a theoretical framework that integrates group strategic behaviors with their general dynamic environments, where the global environmental fluctuations are associated with a nonlinear factor in public goods game and the local environmental feedbacks are described by the 'eco-evolutionary game'. We show how the coupled dynamics of local game-environment evolution differ in static and dynamic global environments. In particular, we find the emergence of cyclic evolution of group cooperation and local environment, which forms an interior irregular loop in the phase plane, depending on the relative changing speed of both global and local environments compared to the strategic change. Further, we observe that this cyclic evolution disappears and transforms into an interior stable equilibrium when the global environment is frequency-dependent. Our results provide important insights into how diverse evolutionary outcomes could emerge from the nonlinear interactions between strategies and the changing environments.

Infectious disease ecology and evolution in a changing world.

Infectious disease ecology and evolution in a changing world.

Past experience with spatial or temporal resource unpredictability shapes exploration in honey bees, Apis mellifera

Foraging animals must repeatedly decide whether to exploit current resources or explore to gain information and locate new resources. Balancing these two often mutually exclusive options is made more difficult by environmental changes that can occur predictably, as seen in daily patterns of nectar secretion in flowers, or unpredictably, as seen when resources are depleted by competitors. Recent experiences with predictable and unpredictable rewards potentially provide information that foraging animals can use to decide when it is beneficial to explore versus exploit. However, it is unclear how the predictability of recent experiences can shape an animal's future exploration after rewards vanish and they have no option but to search. We tested how experience with unpredictability related to two types of environmental change, unpredictability in reward location and unpredictability in daily timing of rewards, shaped the exploratory behaviour of honey bees in the absence of a reward. We found that honey bees that experienced unpredictable rewards in space or time were less precise in their exploration after those rewards vanished. In spatial experiments, bees searched more broadly within a patch if they had experience with unpredictably located rewards and spent more time searching outside the patch than bees that experienced predictably located rewards. In temporal experiments, bees that experienced unpredictably timed rewards distributed their search effort more broadly outside of the time they last received a high-quality reward; also, bees that experienced any change in reward searched more intensively regardless of how predictable the reward had been. In contrast to the differences in search precision, a bee's previous experience with spatial or temporal unpredictability of rewards did not change how persistently she searched for a reward. This study provides novel insights into how predictability of previous experiences can shape exploratory behaviour even in the absence of rewards. • Recent experience can inform honey bees' exploratory behaviour when rewards vanish. • Spatial or temporal reward unpredictability made honey bees search less precisely. • Bees searched more broadly within and outside a patch after unpredictable rewards. • Honey bees searched more intensively after experiencing temporally changing rewards. • Experience with unpredictability did not influence honey bee search persistence.

Handling dynamic multiobjective optimization problems with variable environmental change via classification prediction and dynamic mutation

This paper proposes an adaptive dynamic multiobjective optimization algorithm for handling dynamic multiobjective optimization problems with variable environmental change types. Most of the existing dynamic multiobjective optimization problems (DMOPs) only deal with a single change type in the environment. Therefore, we design a set of DMOPs that has variable and mixed change types. Next, this paper proposes an adaptive dynamic multiobjective optimization algorithm (DMOA) focusing on the change types, to solve DMOPs with variable change types. It can detect the different types of environmental changes. The main purpose of a DMOA is to find the Pareto-optimal set (PS) of each environment. Therefore, the change types of DMOPs mainly contain two categories: PS changes over time and PS remains constant. After detecting the change type, an adaptive response strategy is activated to react to environmental changes. If PS changes over time, a classification prediction (CP) strategy is active to respond to environmental changes. If PS remains constant, a dynamic mutation (DM) strategy works to react to environmental changes. The proposed algorithm is extensively studied through comparison with several advanced DMOAs, thereby demonstrating its effectiveness in working out complex DMOPs with variable change types and on the parameter-tuning problem of PID controllers for dynamic systems.

A Self-Adaptive Response Strategy for Dynamic Multiobjective Evolutionary Optimization Based on Objective Space Decomposition.

Dynamic multiobjective optimization deals with simultaneous optimization of multiple conflicting objectives that change over time. Several response strategies for dynamic optimization have been proposed, which do not work well for all types of environmental changes. In this article, we propose a new dynamic multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on objective space decomposition, in which the maxi-min fitness function is adopted for selection and a self-adaptive response strategy integrating a number of different response strategies is designed to handle unknown environmental changes. The self-adaptive response strategy can adaptively select one of the strategies according to their contributions to the tracking performance in the previous environments. Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm is competitive and promising for solving different DMOPs in the presence of unknown environmental changes. Meanwhile, the proposed algorithm is applied to solve the parameter tuning problem of a proportional integral derivative (PID) controller of a dynamic system, obtaining better control effect.

Dynamic Multiobjective Optimization with Multiple Response Strategies Based on Linear Environment Detection

Dynamic multiobjective optimization problems (DMOPs) bring more challenges for multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) due to its time-varying characteristic. To handle this kind of DMOPs, this paper presents a dynamic MOEA with multiple response strategies based on linear environment detection, called DMOEA-LEM. In this approach, different types of environmental changes are estimated and then the corresponding response strategies are activated to generate an efficient initial population for the new environment. DMOEA-LEM not only detects whether the environmental changes but also estimates the types of linear changes so that different prediction models can be selected to initialize the population when the environmental changes. To study the performance of DMOEA-LEM, a large number of test DMOPs are adopted and the experiments validate the advantages of our algorithm when compared to three state-of-the-art dynamic MOEAs.

Study of Mangrove Forest Change towards the Diversity and Carbon Stock of Mangroves in Segara Anakan, Cilacap

Segara Anakan Cilacap, being the largest mangrove area in Java Island, is one example of a degraded area which is mostly caused by land conversion to farming lands, ponds, housing, and industrial properties affecting the mangrove community in various ways. The objective of this research is to know the diversity and carbon stock of mangroves in different types of environmental change in Segara Anakan, Cilacap, as well as to know the correlation between environmental factors in various types of environmental change with diversity and carbon stock of mangroves in Segara Anakan, Cilacap. This research was conducted using clustered sampling from 8 stations located at the ex rice field, ex shrimp pond, illegal cutting area, and forest. The highest diversity and carbon stock value belong to stations with forest habitats with a total of 34 tons/ha of carbon stock and the highest diversity of saplings in station F1 (1.80). Correlation values between diversity and environmental factors ranged from 0.172–0.449, whereas results between carbon stock and environmental factors range from 0.065-0.724.

Floristics diversity composition along an altitudinal gradient in Himalayan chir pine forest of the western Himalayas

In the present study, we examined the species composition of Himalayan Chir Pine forest (Pinus roxburghii Sargent) at different altitudes between 1000-1600m asl, considering three altitudinal gradients viz., A1(Lower altitude: 1000-1200m); A2(Middle altitude: 1200-1400m); A3(Higher altitude: 1400-1600m) in the Western Himalayas. In this study, a total of 50 species were recorded, of which 9 were trees, 15 shrubs, 26 herbs. Herb plant richness (in number) showed a diminishing trend with altitude whereas shrub species remain same for low and mid altitudes with slight drop in high altitudes and the tree species richness remain constant for all the altitudes. Many types of environmental changes (altitudes, slopes, aspect, temperature, precipitation etc.) influence the processes that can both augment or erode diversity. The study suggests that species distribution, presence of the particular species (species composition) and number of species present (species richness) are largely regulated by altitudes and other climatic + topographic factors.

Listening to and Composing with the Soundscapes of Climate Change

Listening to and Composing with the Soundscapes of Climate Change Kate Galloway (bio) Climate change and the soundscapes of the contemporary energy industries, including their environmental impact, are audible. The public, however, is still learning how to listen to, perceive, and express this audible environmental information. Since the early 2000s, Canadian composer Derek Charke has combined electroacoustic elements, field recordings, and acoustic instruments to comment on environmental issues and ecological relationships. Fascinated by recording and composing with the sounds of the environment, Charke's compositions use the sounds of the environment to express his personal affinity for the soundscapes of Northern Canada and concern for the environment. His personal connection to this region and his observations of environmental change shape how his field recorder and his ears listen to these places as he records how climate change irreversibly alters the landscape and social life of Northern Canada. His embodied knowledge of the location influences where he places his field recorder for long durational recordings and how he moves through the environment recording with his handheld field recorder. Field-recording paraphernalia—including omnidirectional condensers, binaural in-ear microphones, hydrophones, contact microphones, and handheld solid-state recorders—provide a means of archiving and listening back to long-form uninterrupted recordings of a location and how its conditions change over time. Field recording enhances human listening, providing sonic information and knowledge gathered through this form of mobile hearing enhancement and recording. Hydrophones, for instance, are submerged deep below the water's surface, listening to aquatic ecologies the human ear is unable to adequately listen to. Field recording and composing [End Page 81] with these recordings can amplify the sonic environment; and by crafting an interpretive sonic document that is rich in sonic detail and nuance, listeners are provided with a sonic space where they can embody an individualized sound world in flux. Charke's extended personal experience in the Arctic and his ongoing concern for the state of the environment are highlighted in this work through his spatial explorations using an array of field-recording techniques and his compositional treatment of his sound materials and subject matter. By listening to the Canadian Arctic and other remote environs, listening with both his ears as well as with his field-recording equipment, Charke provides a sensory experience of environmentally harmful human activity, such as oil refining and industrial-scale production. In the age of climate change awareness, how should composers use sonic materials to address the scope of human impact on the nonhuman environment? This is a question that Charke and other composers, sound artists, acoustic ecologists, and field recordists who create music using environmental sound are attempting to answer through their creative activity that witnesses, archives, and circulates physical and audible environmental change.1 The ecological crisis demands dialogue and collaboration across disciplines and modes of sensory perception. My analysis contributes to the conversation about how expressive culture—particularly music and sound—conveys information and knowledge about environmental issues, taking an alternative format to the sciences in order to disseminate information concerning interactions among human and nonhuman systems, environmental science, and climate change discourse. In this article, I discuss some ways that music and environmental sound are used to listen to the aurality of climate change. Field recording is used by Charke as a creative mechanism for listening to expressive climate change. Through Charke's thoughtful studio manipulation and composition, the field recordings in his music imitate environmental phenomena. Drawing from the interdisciplinary field of acoustic ecology, I sketch out some of the ways that Charke interprets sonic and ecological experiences of live places and environments into his compositions. Acoustic ecology sets out to analyze soundscapes and examine the sonic relationships among human and nonhuman actors in their environment. One of the central motivations of acoustic ecology is to raise public awareness concerning the ways human society [End Page 82] participates in composing, shaping, and revising the soundscape. Following a generation of composers in the 1960s and 1970s who integrated the sonic aesthetics and ecological politics of acoustic ecology into their creative work, Charke similarly uses field recording and modes of intimate listening to environments to depict different types of environmental change. I use...

Plant communities are more sensitive than soil microbial communities to multiple environmental changes in the Eurasian steppe

Understanding species responsiveness to anthropogenic environmental changes benefits the guide to manage biodiversity. Microbes are traditionally thought to be more sensitive to environmental changes than plants. However, this hypothesis is supported by little empirical evidence. We compared plant and microbial responses to 13 types of simulated environmental changes (mowing (M), adding nitrogen (N), adding phosphorus (P), watering (W), warming (T) and combinations of these) in a steppe ecosystem. Contrary to our hypothesis, the microbial responses were generally smaller than the plant responses to different types of environmental changes, both at the community-abundance level and species/operational taxonomic unit (OTU)/gene level. This might be ascribed to the soil buffering capacity to environmental changes, and the rapid evolutionary adaptation for microbial communities. Furthermore, the responses at the community-abundance level were larger than at the species/OTU/gene level to 13 types of environmental changes, both in plant and microbial communities. Given that the community abundance representing the total number of all individuals of the organism within the community, the responses to environmental changes at the community-abundance level is likely to be larger than at the species/OTU/gene level. Plant biomass was more responsive to N addition, particularly in such N- limiting grassland ecosystem. Our findings highlight that plant communities are more responsive to environmental changes than microbial communities, contrary to the traditional viewpoint. Therefore, plant communities could be used as ecological indicators of anthropogenic environmental changes in grasslands.

Environmental DNA metabarcoding of wild flowers reveals diverse communities of terrestrial arthropods.

Terrestrial arthropods comprise the most species‐rich communities on Earth, and grassland flowers provide resources for hundreds of thousands of arthropod species. Diverse grassland ecosystems worldwide are threatened by various types of environmental change, which has led to decline in arthropod diversity. At the same time, monitoring grassland arthropod diversity is time‐consuming and strictly dependent on declining taxonomic expertise. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding of complex samples has demonstrated that information on species compositions can be efficiently and non‐invasively obtained. Here, we test the potential of wild flowers as a novel source of arthropod eDNA. We performed eDNA metabarcoding of flowers from several different plant species using two sets of generic primers, targeting the mitochondrial genes 16S rRNA and COI. Our results show that terrestrial arthropod species leave traces of DNA on the flowers that they interact with. We obtained eDNA from at least 135 arthropod species in 67 families and 14 orders, together representing diverse ecological groups including pollinators, parasitoids, gall inducers, predators, and phytophagous species. Arthropod communities clustered together according to plant species. Our data also indicate that this experiment was not exhaustive, and that an even higher arthropod richness could be obtained using this eDNA approach. Overall, our results demonstrate that it is possible to obtain information on diverse communities of insects and other terrestrial arthropods from eDNA metabarcoding of wild flowers. This novel source of eDNA represents a vast potential for addressing fundamental research questions in ecology, obtaining data on cryptic and unknown species of plant‐associated arthropods, as well as applied research on pest management or conservation of endangered species such as wild pollinators.

Evaluating the specificity of ecosystem indicators to fishing in a changing environment: A model comparison study for the southern Benguela ecosystem

Ecological indicators used to monitor fishing effects in the context of climate change and variability need to be informative to enable effective ecosystem-based fisheries management. We evaluated the specificity of the response of ecosystem indicators to different fishing and environmental pressure levels using Ecosim and Atlantis ecosystem models for the southern Benguela ecosystem. Three fishing strategies were modelled to represent a variety of ways of targeting fishing within an ecosystem: one focused on low trophic levels (i.e. forage species), another on higher trophic levels (i.e. predatory fish) and a third tested fishing pressure across the full range of potentially exploitable species. Two types of environmental change were simulated for each fishing mortality scenario – random environmental variability and directional climate change. The specificity of selected ecological indicators (mean trophic level of the community, proportion of predatory fish, biomass/landings, mean intrinsic vulnerability and marine trophic index) was evaluated for different combinations of fishing strategy, fishing mortality and both types of environmental change. While there were mostly large differences in indicator values computed from the Atlantis and Ecosim models, the specificity of the ecological indicators considered under changing climate generally corresponded between the two models. Certain indicators (i.e. mean trophic level of the community) were less specific in detecting effects of fishing in the southern Benguela for some of the three fishing strategies modelled (i.e. high trophic level fishing strategy) under climate change. This helped refine the most appropriate indicator set for our system, reflecting the focus of a particular fishing strategy, and improved confidence in the suitability of these indicators for monitoring fishing effects in the Southern Benguela.

The specificity of marine ecological indicators to fishing in the face of environmental change: A multi-model evaluation

Ecological indicators are widely used to characterise ecosystem health. In the marine environment, indicators have been developed to assess the ecosystem effects of fishing to support an ecosystem approach to fisheries. However, very little work on the performance and robustness of ecological indicators has been carried out. An important aspect of robustness is that indicators should respond specifically to changes in the pressures they are designed to detect (e.g. fishing) rather than changes in other drivers (e.g. environment). We adopted a multi-model approach to compare and test the specificity of commonly used ecological indicators to capture fishing effects in the presence of environmental change and under different fishing strategies. We tested specificity in the presence of two types of environmental change: “random”, representing interannual climate variability and “directional”, representing climate change. We used phytoplankton biomass as a proxy of the environmental conditions, as this driver was comparable across all ecosystem models, then applied a signal-to-noise ratio analysis to test the specificity of indicators with random environmental change. For directional change, we used mean gradients to apportion the quantity of change in the indicators due to fishing and the environment. We found that depending on the fishing strategy and environmental change, ecological indicators could range from high to low specificity to fishing. As expected, the specificity of indicators to fishing almost always decreased as environmental variability increased. In 55–76% of the scenarios run with directional change in phytoplankton biomass across fishing strategies and ecosystem models, indicators were significantly more responsive to changes in fishing than to changes in phytoplankton biomass. This important result makes the tested ecological indicators good candidates to support fisheries management in a changing environment. Among the indicators, the catch over biomass ratio was most often the most specific indicator to fishing, whereas mean length was most often the most sensitive to change in phytoplankton biomass. However, the responses of indicators were highly variable depending on the ecosystem and fishing strategy under consideration. We therefore recommend that indicators should be tested in the particular ecosystem before they are used for monitoring and management purposes.

Leaf litter mediates the negative effect of road salt on forested wetland communities

AbstractHuman modification of landscapes has substantially altered the quality and quantity of terrestrial subsidies to freshwater ecosystems. The same modifications frequently lead to addition of chemical contaminants to freshwater environments. Both types of environmental change can alter the abundance of species and can lead to ecological interactions that affect entire communities. We examined how variation of tree litter inputs interacts with inputs of road salt deicers, which are an increasingly common contaminant in northern latitudes. Based on studies of the effects of each factor in isolation, we hypothesized that elevated Cl− levels would reduce copepod densities, increase algal abundance, and subsequently increase salt-tolerant consumer densities and biomass. We also hypothesized that these effects would be most pronounced in the presence of highly soluble leaf litter (e.g., Acer rubrum). We constructed experimental freshwater ponds containing assemblages of phytoplankton, periphyton, zooplankt...

Natural hazard damage detection based on object-level support vector data description of optical and SAR Earth observations

ABSTRACTThe Earth’s land covers are exposed to several types of environmental changes, issued by either human activities or natural disasters. On 11 March 2011, an earthquake occurred at about 130 km of the east coast of Sendai City in Japan. This earthquake has been followed by a huge tsunami, which caused devastating damages over the wide areas in the eastern coastlines of Japan. In order to manage such crises quickly and efficiently, change maps of affected areas are really crucial for damage estimation and proposing the essential services. Therefore, an automatic extraction of inundated and damaged areas from satellite images, with less user interaction, is essential and helpful. So far, the existing change detection (CD) approaches have a low degree of automation and are not optimal and applicable to high resolution optical and radar remote-sensing data. In order to resolve these problems, an integrated object-level CD method based on an object-based classifier and support vector data description method is proposed. In addition, parameter determination of the proposed method is addressed automatically by using an inter-cluster distance based approach. In order to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method and extract the damaged areas, various optical and radar remote-sensing images from before and after of Sendai 2011’s tsunami, acquired by IKONOS, Radarsat-2, and TerraSAR-X, were used. The accuracy analysis of results showed a great flexibility for CD of by finding nonlinear object-level solutions to the problem. Furthermore, the comparative analysis of experimental results from IKONOS, Radarsat-2, and TerraSAR-X (kappa coefficient (κ): 0.85, 0.82, 0.76) and Support Vector Machine-based CD techniques (κ = 0.83, 0.73, 0.84), showed that the accuracy of the change maps is relatively improved. Finally, we came to the conclusion that the proposed method is considerably automated and less influenced by the errors in the classification process.

The response of amphibian larvae to environmental change is both consistent and variable

Many environments are undergoing rapid environmental change and there is a need to understand the mechanisms by which species can persist in altered environments. Model systems, such as amphibian metamorphosis, which can be generalized across many types of environmental change and across many species, are a powerful tool for understanding mechanisms that facilitate persistence in altered and disturbed environments. Amphibian larvae respond to environmental change by varying age at metamorphosis, or size at metamorphosis. Differential selection pressures on age or size at metamorphosis may result in a differential response among taxa to environmental change. Using a meta‐analysis, we investigated whether age at metamorphosis, size at metamorphosis, and larval growth rate vary within and among taxonomic families of amphibians in experiments that modified the environmental temperature, density of individuals, food, hydroperiod and the presence of predators. For all environmental factors except predators, the direction of the response was consistent across most of the studied taxa. However, there was considerable variation in effect size both within and among families. Results demonstrate that amphibian metamorphosis is a valuable model system for studying the effects of environmental change. Yet, we stress the need for caution in making generalizations about how individuals respond to environmental factors that have an indirect effect on physiology and require the perception of an environmental cue, such as the presence of predators.SynthesisAs the current conditions of the environment are rapidly changing there is a need to understand how organisms respond to environmental change, and whether response of one species can be generalized to other species. Using a meta‐analyses, we tested whether the phenotypic response of amphibian larvae to five types of environmental change is consistent among and within taxonomic families. The phenotypic response to changes in environmental factors was consistent when the environmental factor has a direct effect on physiology, but varies among and within family if the environmental factor has an indirect effect on physiology or requires the perception of an environmental cue.

Aplicação de um protocolo de avaliação ambiental rápida em dois reservatórios do semiárido brasileiro

In the semi-arid region of Brazil, artificial reservoirs are ecosystems of extremely important ecological and social. Due to pressures caused by long periods of pluviometric irregularity, the reservoirs Cachoeira I and Barra, located in the interior of Pernambuco, have been subject to very significant changes, marked mainly by the reduction of stored water volume, seasonal changes in the abiotic parameters, reduction of riparian vegetation and absence of macrophytes. All these changes were observed in this study through the use of an auxiliary monitoring tool, a rapid assessment protocol adapted for lentic ecosystems of semiarid, capable of detecting numerous types of environmental changes, assisting in monitoring these springs.

The role of environmental perceptions in migration decision-making: evidence from both migrants and non-migrants in five developing countries

Research has demonstrated that, in a variety of settings, environmental factors influence migration. Yet much of the existing work examines objective indicators of environmental conditions as opposed to the environmental perceptions of potential migrants. This paper examines migration decision-making and individual perceptions of different types of environmental change (sudden vs. gradual environmental events) with a focus on five developing countries: Vietnam, Cambodia, Uganda, Nicaragua, and Peru. The survey data include both migrants and non-migrants, with the results suggesting that individual perceptions of long-term (gradual) environmental events, such as droughts, lower the likelihood of internal migration. However, sudden-onset events, such as floods, increase movement. These findings substantially improve our understanding of perceptions as related to internal migration and also suggest that a more differentiated perspective is needed on environmental migration as a form of adaptation.