The Syndemic and One Health Nature of Pandemics

The interdependence of humans, animals, plants, and their social and abiotic environment is highlighted by past and recent pandemics. A good example to understand and tackle threats to ecosystems is the COVID-19 pandemic. A syndemic is a complex and multilevel phenomenon of epidemics interacting synergistically at individual, societal, and environmental levels. Understanding the syndemic nature of pandemics will facilitate the adoption of a One Health approach to improve planetary health. To address the eco-complexity underlying One Health issues, the development of intelligence management systems through a planetary perspective is of key importance. This requires the capacity to capture, process, and communicate data on human, animal, and plant health and well-being, and on their social and environmental determinants. The implementation of such systems will need political commitment at all levels of action, deployment of adequate resources and expertise, reliable and comprehensive data flowing pathways through interoperable, flexible, and secure data sharing systems.

Non-kin Cooperation in Ants

Eusociality represents an extreme form of social behavior characterized by a reproductive division of labor. Eusociality necessarily evolved through kin selection, which requires interactions among related individuals. However, many eusocial taxa also show cooperation between non-kin groups, challenging the idea that cooperative actions should only occur among relatives. This review explores the causes and consequences of non-kin cooperation in ants. Ants display a diversity of behaviors that lead to non-kin cooperation within and between species. These interactions occur among both reproductive and non-reproductive individuals. The proximate and ultimate mechanisms leading to non-kin cooperative interactions differ substantially depending on the biotic and abiotic environment. We end this review with directions for future research and suggest that the investigation of non-kin cooperative actions provides insight into processes leading to social evolution.

Introduction

Predator–prey interactions represent an essential component of natural systems. By consuming other organisms, predators transfer energy from lower trophic levels to higher trophic levels, simultaneously altering the abundance of prey and fueling growth of the predator population. The functional response describes the rate of foraging as a function of prey abundance, connecting predator–prey pairs in food webs. The functional response integrates nearly all aspects of biology, including genetics, morphology, behavior, parasites and disease, risk, and the abiotic environment. As a result, the functional response is a core construct that is essential for understanding and predicting the structure and dynamics of ecological systems. Because the functional response responds to temperature and other changes in the environment, the functional response is also essential for predicting the effects of climate change, managing and conserving species, and the evolution of interacting species.

Increase in marine provinciality over the last 250 million years governed more by climate change than plate tectonics

Amidst long-term fluctuations of the abiotic environment, the degree to which life organizes into distinct biogeographic provinces (provinciality) can reveal the fundamental drivers of global biodiversity. Our understanding of present-day biogeography implies that changes in the distribution of continents across climatic zones have predictable effects on habitat distribution, dispersal barriers and the evolution of provinciality. To assess marine provinciality through the Phanerozoic, here we (a) simulate provinces based on palaeogeographic reconstructions and global climate models and (b) contrast them with empirically derived provinces that we define using network analysis of fossil occurrences. Simulated and empirical patterns match reasonably well and consistently suggest a greater than 15% increase in provinciality since the Mesozoic era. Although both factors played a role, the simulations imply that the effect of the latitudinal temperature gradient has been twice as important in determining marine provinciality as continental configuration.

Linking Wine Culture and Geoheritage—Missing Opportunities at European UNESCO World Heritage Sites and in UNESCO Global Geoparks? A Survey of Web-Based Resources

Vine cultivation is strongly dependent on local terrain conditions, including geology, landforms and soils. This offers an opportunity to develop interpretation and geo-education that would holistically relate wine culture to abiotic environment. Wine-related cultural landscapes inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List and those UNESCO Global Geoparks, where wine production is an important economic activity or leaves a distinctive imprint on the landscape, are particularly suited to emphasize local geoheritage in this specific context. We analyzed official web-based resources of UNESCO World Heritage Committee, UNESCO Global Geoparks programme, individual World Heritage properties and individual global geoparks to evaluate whether causal relationships between geoheritage, geodiversity and wine culture are indicated at all, and if so, how they are presented and linked to geotourism and geo-education. Our analysis involved 14 World Heritage properties and 38 global geoparks, all located in Europe. General observation is that given web-based information alone, the theme is insufficiently explored and poorly communicated to the public, although more recent nomination dossiers for World Heritage contain extensive presentations of abiotic environment. These are, however, not very likely to be consulted by the general public. In global geoparks, wine culture is mainly presented as a sustainable local activity, with local wine as one of brand products, whereas geoheritage context is seldom considered in depth. Growing interest in wine tourism and increasing appreciation of the value of cultural landscapes provide a good background to develop geo-interpretation and thereby to raise awareness of geoheritage matters.

Advances and challenges in bryophyte biology after 50 years of International Association of Bryologists

Research on bryophyte biology has made exciting advances during the last 10 to 15 years since the publications of Goffinet & Shaw (2008) and Frey & Stech (2009) that summarized the knowledge of the field. New fossils provided insights into past bryophyte diversity and integrative taxonomic approaches combine the ever increasing molecular data with thorough assessments of morphology and anatomy. Patterns of speciation, diversity at population level and geographic distributions are becoming better understood, and the interactions of bryophytes with their biotic and abiotic environment are increasingly being revealed. Nevertheless, important knowledge gaps remain, and anthropogenic threats such as habitat alterations and global climate change on bryophyte diversity increase the urgency of further research.

Gradient analysis of soil-plant interactions from the alpine-nival ecotone to the snowline on slopes of the Central Great Caucasus (Kazbegi Region, Georgia)

Alpine ecosystems are especially sensitive to climatic changes which affect the relationships among glaciers, snow, vegetation and soils. Our aim was to examine how the variation in the abiotic environment affected soil properties and plant species distribution at regional and local scales. We sampled soil and vegetation along two transects set on the opposite-facing slopes (North versus South), from the alpine-nival ecotone to the snowline (Central Great Caucasus, Kazbegi, Georgia). We measured also soil temperature and controlled for the slope inclination. Multivariate ordination methods were used to link abiotic factors, soil properties and plant species distribution along the gradients. We found that ordination models were better resolved when soil properties were used as environmental variables instead of abiotic ones such as elevation, inclination and slope aspect. Soil pH and plant available potassium were the best predictors of plant species distribution in these habitats. We conclude that the models that account for the role of soils as a mediator between the abiotic environment and vegetation can more accurately describe plant species distribution at local and regional scales: a potentially important amendment with implications for the monitoring of the effects of climate change on vegetation at least in high mountain systems.

The Benthic Trophic Corner Stone Compartment in POPs Transfer from Abiotic Environment to Higher Trophic Levels—Trichoptera and Ephemeroptera Pre-Alert Indicator Role

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have been at the forefront of environmental contamination research even before their ban in 2001 at the Stockholm Convention. Their relation to different compartments of the environment (biotic and abiotic) has been thoroughly investigated. This article aims to identify whether the benthos could represent a reliable indicator of environmental contamination with POPs and to highlight its potential transfer role between abiotic and upper trophic compartments—benthos feeders. In this regard, we determined that the Ephemeroptera samples have higher concentrations (p < 0.05) of ΣPCB, ΣHCH, and ΣDDT than sediment samples while Trichoptera samples have higher concentrations (p < 0.05) only in the case of ΣPCB and ΣDDT. This, along with the fact that the frequency of detection for POPs is similar between the sample types (sediments, Trichoptera, and Ephemeroptera), makes the benthos samples valuable indicators of contamination with sediment samples working as complementary information about how recent the contamination is.

Geodiversity and geoheritage in the perspective of geography

The paper states that geodiversity is the abiotic complement to biodiversity, and is considered to be the elements associated with the abiotic environment, e.g. geological diversity, geomorphodiversity, pedodiversity, hydrodiversity and climodiversity. Geoheritage is considered as the geological heritage of a site, but is here presented as the abiotic heritage of a site, and is related to geological heritage, geomorphoheritage, pedoheritage, hydroheritage and climoheritage. Thus, it is possible to talk about geological sites, geomorphosites, pedosites, hydrosites and climosites. Geodiversity and geoheritage are strongly linked to geology. However, it is also a new paradigm to geography, as physical geography classically works with abiotic and biotic environments.

Infectious and parasitic diseases of phytophagous insect pests in the context of extreme environmental conditions

The density of phytophagous insect pest populations is related (directly and indirectly) to several groups of factors that can be broadly divided into: abiotic, biotic and anthropogenic. Each extreme in the abiotic environment at a macro-level leads to a series of consecutive extremes in the biotic environment, which eventually results in micro-level responses in the individual organisms. The manifestation of factors acts in aggregate or in a sequence, creating a chain of processes around us. Insects very efficiently use the abundance of nutritional resources, resulting in a tremendous increase in their population density, and triggering control mechanisms through the emergence of parasitic and pathogenic infections (viruses, bacteria, fungi, microsporidia, protozoa and nematodes). The development of entomopathogenic infections in host populations is directly dependent on the characteristics of both the antagonist and the insect. It is associated with the lifestyle and life cycle of the insect, with features encoded in the mechanism of pathogen action, and limited by the pathogen’s virulence and pathogenicity.